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THE COST OF WINGS 


AND OTHER STORIES 



t 






Copyright^ 191^, by 
Frederick A. Stokes Company 


All rights reserved 


□ 


AvrU, im 


APR 27 1914 


©CI.A371570 


V'- 



CONTENTS 


The Cost of Wings 



• 


• 


FAQE 

1 

A Faded Eomance . 



• 


• 

* 

11 

An Indian Baby . 





• 

• 

41 

Yvonne 



• 


• 

• 

52 

The Delusion of Mrs. Donohoe 



• 


• 

• 

70 

PONSONBY AND THE PANTHERESS 



• 


• 


92 

A Fat Girl’s Love Story 



• 


• 

• 

104 

In the Fourth Dimension . 



• 


• 


116 

The Gewgaw .... 





♦ 

• 

122 

The Night of Power . 



• 


• 


134 

The Man Who Could Manage Women 


• 


• 

• 

145 

Obsessed 







155 

A Vanished Hand . 



• 



. 

164 

An Ordeal by Fire 



• 



. 

179 

How THE Mistress Came Home 



• 


• 

. 

198 

The Motor-Burglar 



• 


• 

. 

212 

The Lost Boom 



• 


• 

. 

h9 

Father to the Man 



• 


• 

. 

226 

The Fly and the Spider 





• 

. 

235 

For Valor! .... 







243 

Mellicent .... 



• 


• 

. 

248 

The Collapse of the Ideal . 



• 


• 

. 

263 

The Hand That Failed 



• 


• 

. 

272 

His Silhouette 



• 


• 

. 

280 

A Nocturne .... 



• 


• 

. 

292 

The Last Expedition . 



• 


• 


298 






THE COST OF WINGS 


S HELDRICK, returning, refreshed and exhilarated, 
from a spin with a friend who had brought down a 
racing car of forty horse-power and an enthusiasm to 
match, found his wife sitting in the same chair, in the 
same attitude, as it seemed to him, in which he had left 
her, in the bare, dull sitting-room of their quarters at 
the Pavilion Hotel, on the edge of Greymouth Links, 
from which starting point Sheldrick, in fulfillment of his 
recent engagement with the Aero Club of France, had 
arranged to take wing for Cherbourg, wind and weather 
permitting, on the morrow. 

It would be difficult exceedingly to imagine Caruso as 
an engineer or a bank manager, or in any capacity other 
than that of operatic star. It would be equally difficult 
to picture Shackleton as a side-splitting antic and quip- 
monger, or Pelissier in the role of the dauntless explorer. 
Sheldrick, the most recent idol of the flying world, was 
the type-ideal of the aviator. 

Mathematician, engineer, meteorologist, and athlete, 
his tall, lightly built but muscular frame carried the head 
of an eagle. The wide forehead, sloping to the temples, 
the piercing prominently set eyes, the salient nose, and 
the wide, firm, deep-cut mouth characterizing the long- 
winged birds of powerful flight, were Sheldrick's. His, 
too, the long, supple neck, the curiously deceptive shoul- 
der slope that disguises depth of chest while his long 
1 


THE COST OF WINGS 


arms looked as though, were they clothed with feathers, 
they might cleave the air; and his feet gripped the 
ground through the thin, soft boots he always wore, as 
the eagle’s talons grip the rock. 

Perhaps he was not unaware of the suggested resem- 
blance. He had certainly christened his recently com- 
pleted monoplane ^‘Aquila,” and had piloted her to vic- 
tory in two minor events at the Moncaster Spring Fly- 
ing Meeting in April of that year, and at the Nismes 
Concours des Aviateurs of three weeks before had carried 
off the Grand Prix of 25,000 francs for the longest flight 
under favorable weather conditions. And at the Club 
dinner following the presentation of the prizes, Shel- 
drick, flushed with conquest and congratulations, had 
given that pledge whereby the soul of the woman who 
yet loved him was wrung to torture anew. 

^^After all that I have borne,” Mrs. Sheldrick had said 
to herself, sitting in her hideous red moreen- covered 
chair by the green Venetian-blinded window of the star- 
ing hotel sitting-room — “after three years of agony, si- 
lently, patiently endured — after all his promises, I am 
still upon the rack.” 

She looked rather like it as she sat by the window, the 
center one of three that gave a view across the gray- 
green links, and the gray-brown beach of smooth, slid- 
ing pebbles that gave place to the gray-white, throbbing 
water of the English Channel. And the white, drawn 
face that masked her frenzy of anguish, and the dark- 
gray, haunted eyes through which her suffering spirit 
looked, greeted her husband as he burst into the room, 
fresh from his banquet of speed and clean, salt, buoyant 
air, and sympathetic, enthusiastic companionship, like 
an unexpected douche of ice water. 


THE COST OF WINGS 


“Haven^t you been out?^^ 

Sheldrick uttered the words recorded, upon a pause 
implying the swallowing of others less neutrally amia- 
ble. And his face, which had already clouded, darkened 
sullenly as his wife replied: have traveled some dis- 

tance since you left here with your friend.’’ 

“Where have you been?” asked Sheldrick unwillingly, 
as a man who suspects that the question may open some 
unwelcome topic. 

Mrs. Sheldrick looked at her husband full ; and, though 
it had seemed to him that he had read the book of her 
beauty from preface to finis, there was something new 
to him in her regard as she answered: 

“I have gone over in memory every week of the last 
three years that we have spent together, Edgar; and the 
road has been a rough and stony one, without one green 
patch of grass to rest on by the wayside, or one refresh- 
ing spring at which to drink. But I was patient while 
I plodded after you, because I saw an end to what I was 
enduring. Now it seems that I am mistaken. It is only 
my endurance that is at an end.” 

“Why do you talk in allegory, Ella?” Sheldrick broke 
out impatiently. He threw down his leather motoring 
cap with the talc eye shields upon the sofa, and pitched 
his heavy overcoat upon a chair in a corner of the ugly 
room, and let his long, lithe body down into a hideous 
Early Victorian plush armchair beside the empty fire- 
place, where nothing crackled but some fantastically 
bordered strips of red and green gelatine paper, shud- 
dering under the influence of a powerful chimney 
draught. “I’m not an imaginative man,” he went on. 
“Even if my mind were not occupied with a dozen af- 
fairs of supreme urgency I should still boggle at inter- 


4 


THE COST OF WINGS 


preting your cryptic utterances. If you want them un- 
derstood, make them to some minor poet at a garden 
party or an At Home. YouVe stacks of invitations from 
the nicest people to all sorts of functions ever since I 
pulled off those two events at Moncaster and the Grand 
Prix at Nismes. And now that it’s May, and the season 
in full swing, you might be having no end of a capital 
time at home in London instead of ” She inter- 

rupted him with a passionate gesture. 

“I have no home!” 

“No?” said Sheldrick coolly, leaning back his head 
against the knobby back of the Early Victorian arm- 
chair. 

“No!” said Mrs. Sheldrick, and her passion seemed 
to dash itself against and break upon the man’s com- 
posure as a wave beats and breaks upon a rock. “It was 
a home, once, when you were working partner in the 
firm of Mallard, Mallard and Sheldrick, Manufacturers 
of Automobiles; and the life you led was a normal, or- 
dinary, everyday life, and the risks you ran were every- 
day, ordinary risks, such as a woman who loved you — 
note that I say who loved you — might bear without go- 
ing mad or dying of terror. But it is a prison now. I 
cannot breathe in it. Even when you are there with 
me — and when every postman’s knock, or telegraph 
boy’s ring, or telephone message has for the moment 
ceased to be fraught with hideous, often-dreamed-of, 
never-forgotten possibilities . . . when each newsboy’s 
voice, yelling in the streets, has temporarily ceased to be 
the voice of Fate for me — it is no longer home! It is a 
caravanserai, from which Hope and Content and Peace 
of Mind may go out before the next day’s dawning, leav- 


THE COST OF WINGS 5 

ing the door open that Death and Despair may the more 
freely enter ini” 

“Ella!” exclaimed Sheldrick, looking at her open-eyed. 
She had always been such a quiet, calm, self-possessed 
woman, that now, as she rose up out of her chair sud- 
denly, as though she had been prodded with a bayonet, 
she was strange and new, and rather awe-inspiring. As 
she stood before him, her passion-breathing face an ivory 
cameo between the drooping folds of her rich blue-black 
hair, her gray eyes glittering fiercely between the nar- 
rowed lids under the straight black brows, her lips two 
bitterly straightened lines of scarlet showing the gleam- 
ing teeth, her firm chin implacable in its set upon the 
dainty cravat of muslin and black-silk ribbon, her slight 
bosom panting fiercely under her bodice folds, her slen- 
der limbs rigid beneath the sheath-fitting gown of silken 
chestnut-colored cloth, the man, her husband, looked at 
her more attentively than he had looked for years. 

“Ella, what is the matter? What has upset you like 
this? If there is anything I can do to put things right, 
why not tell me, and — and ” 

Sheldrick^s voice faltered, and his eyes looked away 
from his wife’s as he saw the reviving hope leap des- 
perately into her face. It died instantly, leaving her 
gray eyes more somber, and the lines of her scarlet, 
parted lips more bitter than before. 

“Ah, yes!” she said. “Why not tell you what you 
know already, and be coaxed and patted into compli- 
ance and meek, patient submission for the hundredth 
time! You will kiss me good-bye to-morrow morning, if 
the weather permits of your starting, and make this 
flight. It is to be the last, the very last, like the others 
that have gone before it; it is only so much more daring, 


6 


THE COST OF WINGS 


only so much more risky, only so much more dangerous 
than the things that other aviators have dared and 
risked and braved. If it blows from the north you will 
not dream of making the venture — the jagged rocks and 
shoals, and the towering, greedy seas of the Channel 
Islands threaten things too grim. You will wait, and 
I with you — oh, my God! — for a favorable wind. Your 
successes at Brookfields and at Nismes have made the 
^Aquila^ patent worth a moderate fortune; they are turn- 
ing out replicas of her at your workshops as rapidly as 
they can make them — your manager took on twenty 
more skilled hands only last week. You have done what 
you set out to do; we are freed from poverty for the 
rest of our lives — we might live happily, peacefully to- 
gether somewhere, if this unnatural love of peril had 
not bitten you to the bone. ^One more contest,^ you will 
keep on saying; ^one more revenge I am bound to give 
this and that or the other man whom I have beaten, or 
who has challenged me.^ ’’ Her bosom heaved, and the 
ivory paleness of her face was darkened with a rush of 
blood. “Honor is involved. You are bound in honor 
to keep your word to others, but free to deceive, to de- 
fraud, to cheat and lie to — ^your wife!’^ 

“Take care what you’re saying!” 

Sheldrick leaped out of his chair, fiery red and glar- 
ing angrily. Mrs. Sheldrick looked at him out of her 
glittering, narrowed eyes, and laughed, and her laugh 
was ugly to hear. 

“Your wife! Did you ever realize what it meant to 
me to be your wife? When we were married, and for 
eighteen months after that! Heaven upon earth! Have 
you ever dreamed what sort of life began for me when 
you were first bitten by this craze of fiying, three years 


THE COST OF WINGS 


7 


ago? Hell — sheer, unmitigated hell! To the public I 
am a woman in an ulster, or in a dust cloak and a silk 
motor veil, thick to hide the ghastly terror in my face 1 — 
a woman who kisses you before the start, and keeps pace 
with your aeroplane in an automobile through the long- 
distance flights, with what the English newspaper men 
describe as ^unswerving devotion,^ and the French 
press correspondents term 'a tenderness of the most 
touching/ They are wrong! I am not conscious of any 
special devotion. The springs of tenderness have frozen 
in me. I am like every other spectator on the course, 
possessed, body and soul, by the secret, poignant, mo- 
mentary expectation of seeing a man hurled to a horri- 
ble death. Only the man is — ^my husband! Now I re- 
member this, Edgar, but a day will dawn — an hour will 
come to me — is coming as surely as there is a God in 
heaven — when he will be no more than the flying man 
who may possibly be killed!’^ 

There was silence in the room, and the hoarse, dry 
sound that broke it was not a sob. It came from Shel- 
drick, a single utterance, like the sound of something 
breaking. 

“I — ^understand !’^ 

There was no response, for the woman, having un- 
sealed and poured out the last drop of her vials of bit- 
terness and wrath, was dumb. Sheldrick added, after a 
long pause: 

^What do you ask? That I should give up the at- 
tempt to fly to Cherbourg? That I should break the 
engagement with the Aero Club — withdraw the chal- 
lenge given to M. Ledru? Is that what you demand?’^ 

She said with a hopeless gesture: 

“I ask nothing! I demand nothing I 


8 


THE COST OF WINGS 


Sheldrick muttered an oath. But in his soul he was 
yielding. ^^Aquila No. 1,” ‘‘Aquila No. 2/’ and “Aquila 
No. 3” were dear to his soul. But he had awakened to 
the fact that his dearest possession was the love of his 
wife. And he had been killing it by inches. He met 
her eyes now — the stern gray eyes that had learned to 
see him as he was and look on the bare realities of life, 
shorn of its love glamour, and muttered: 

“It is true. I have promised over and over. . . . And 
I owe it to you to take no more risks, even more than if 
we had a living child to . . . Where are those cable- 
forms?” 

He strode to the ink-splashed writing table between 
the windows, and routed the bundle of greenish papers 
out of the frowsy blotting book, and dipped the blunt 
pen into the thick, dirty ink, and wrote: 

“To Ledru, Hotel National, Cherbourg, France. 

“Unavoidably compelled break engagement ” 

He was struck by a sudden idea, ceased writing, and 
left the room, going into the adjoining bedroom. His 
wife, standing dumb and frozen on the gaudy hearth 
rug near the empty grate, heard him rummaging for 
something. He came back in a few minutes with a 
heavy brow and preoccupied look, and took a leather 
strap from the pocket of the heavy overcoat he had 
thrown upon the sofa. With this he went back into the 
bedroom. The door handle rattled as though some- 
thing were being hitched about it, the stout door groaned 
and creaked under a violent pull from the other side, 
there was a horrible, suggestive crack, and a stifled oath 
from Sheldrick. Next moment he was back in the room, 


THE COST OF WINGS 9 

dipping the blunt pen into the bad ink, and finishing the 
cablegram: 

^Teft wrist badly sprained. — Sheldrick, Pavilion Ho- 
tel, Links, Greymouth, England/^ 

Having finished writing, he brought the filled form to 
his wife. She read, and looked at him in eloquent si- 
lence. And, in answer to the question in her eyes, he 
held out his left hand, already swollen and purple, and 
with a swelling of the dimensions of a cricket ball, indi- 
cating the dislocated joint. A cry broke from her: 

^‘Oh ! how could you . . 

^Tt was the easiest way,^^ said Sheldrick, flushed and 
scowling. “Call me a coward, if you like. I deserve it 
— as well as the other names !’^ He rang the bell, and 
fished with the sound hand for silver in a trouser 
pocket. 

“We^ll send the cable now,^^ he said. 

She bit her lips, that were no longer scarlet, and went 
to the blotted blotter, dipped the worn pen into the 
blobby ink, and made an alteration in the cablegram. 
Then she showed it to him, and the message ran: 

“To Ledru, Hotel National, Cherbourg, France, 

“Unavoidably compelled postpone engagement. Left 
wrist badly sprained. — Sheldrick, Pavilion Hotel, 
Links, Greymouth, England.^^ 

As Sheldrick looked at Mrs. Sheldrick, in intent 
amazement, the bell was answered by a German waiter. 
Mrs. Sheldrick took the silver out of Sheldrick^s sound 
hand, dismissed the attendant to dispatch the message, 


10 


THE COST OF WINGS 


closed and locked the door of the sitting-room against 
intruders, and then went quickly to her husband and fell 
upon his breast. He clasped her with his sound arm as 
she broke into passionate weeping, and only whispered 
when at last she lifted her face to his: 

“Why ^postponed’?” 

“Because,” whispered Ella Sheldrick, with her cheek 
against her husband's, “because you are not chained to 
your rock, my darling, with iron bars between you and 
the free fields of space, forged by the wife you love. You 
are free to give and take as many challenges as you de- 
sire. When you have finished 'Aquila No. 4,' that shall 
be built with a seat for a passenger beside you, run what 
risks you choose, brave as many dangers as seem good 
to you; I will not say one word, provided that I share 
the risk and brave the danger too.” 

This is why the successful aviator Sheldrick never flies 
without a passenger. And the story has a moral — of a 
kind. 


A FADED ROMANCE 


In Two Parts 
I 

T he ladies of the household at Charny-les-Bois usu- 
ally sat in the library on sunny mornings. At the 
southern end of the long room, paneled in black walnut, 
and possessing a hooded stone fireplace of the fifteenth 
century, there was a bay, with wide glass doors open- 
ing upon a perron of wrought iron and copper work, 
which led down into the lovely garden — a piece of land 
originally reclaimed from the heart of the ancient beech 
forest, whose splendid somberness set off the dazzling 
whiteness of the chateau and made the parterres glow 
and sparkle like jewels — rubies, turquoises, emeralds, 
sapphires — poured out upon the green velvet lap of 
princess or courtesan. 

The Marquis de Courvaux, lord of the soil and owner 
of the historic mansion, was absent. One must picture 
him leading the hunt through the forest alleys, attired 
in a maroon and yellow uniform of the most exquisite 
correctness, three-cocked hat, and immense spurred jack- 
boots, and accompanied by a field of fifty or sixty, of 
which every individual had turned out in a different cos- 
tume: green corduroy knickerbockers with gold braid 
accompanying cut-away coats and jockey caps, and 
11 


12 


A FADED ROMANCE 


bowlers of English make, sported in combination with 
pink and leathers, adding much to the kaleidoscopic ef- 
fect. Half a dozen cuirassiers from the neighboring gar- 
rison town were upon their London coach, driving a 
scratch four-in-hand and attired in full uniform; various 
vehicles, of types ranging from the capacious char-a- 
banc to the landaulette, were laden with ardent votaries 
of the chasse. 

The distant fanfare of the horns sounding the ragot 
reached the ears of the ladies sewing in the library at the 
chateau. One of these ladies, detained by urgent nur- 
sery reasons from joining in the morning’s sport, was 
the young and pretty wife of the Marquis; the other, old 
as a high-bred French lady alone knows how to be, and 
still beautiful, was his mother. Over the high-arched 
cover of the great carved fireplace was her portrait by 
Varolan, painted at sixteen, in the full ball costume of 
1870. One saw, regarding that portrait, that it was pos- 
sible to be beautiful in those days even with a chignon 
and waterfall, even with panniers or bustle, and absurd 
trimmings of the ham-frill type. Perhaps some such 
reflection passed through the calm mind behind the 
broad, white, unwrinkled forehead of Madame de Cour- 
vaux, as she removed her gold spectacles and lifted her 
eyes, darkly blue and brilliant still, to the exquisite 
childish flower face of the portrait. The autumn breeze 
coming in little puffs between the open battants of the 
glass doors, savoring of crushed thyme, late violets, moss, 
bruised beech leaves, and other pleasant things, stirred 
the thick, waving, gold-gray tresses under the rich lace, 
a profusion of which, with the charming coquetry of a 
venerable beauty, the grandmamma of the chubby young 
gentleman upstairs in the nursery, the thirteen-year-old 


A FADED ROMANCE 


13 


schoolboy on his hunting pony, and the budding belle but 
newly emancipated from her convent, was fond of wear- 
ing — sometimes tied under her still lovely chin, some- 
times floating loosely over her shoulders. 

“There again!” The younger Madame de Courvaux 
arched her mobile eyebrows and showed her pretty teeth 
as she bit off a thread of embroidery cotton. “The third 
time you have looked at that portrait within ten min- 
utes! Tell me, do you think it is getting stained with 
smoke? In north winds this chimney does not always 

behave itself, and Frederic's cigars and pipes ” The 

speaker shrugged her charming shoulders. “But he is 
incorrigible, as thou knowest, Maman” 

“I was not thinking of Frederic or the chimney.” The 
elder lady smiled, still looking upward at the girlish face 
overhead. “It occurred to me that forty years have 
passed since I gave Carlo Varolan the first sitting for 
that portrait. His studio in the Rue Vernet was a per- 
fect museum of lovely things. ... I was never tired of 
examining them. . . . My gouvemante fell asleep in a 
great tapestry chair. . . . Varolan drew a caricature of 
her — so laughable! — with a dozen strokes of the charcoal 
on the canvas, and then rubbed it all out with a grave 
expression that made me laugh more. I was only just 
sixteen, and going to be married in a fortnight. . . . 
And I could laugh like that!” The antique brooch of 
black pearls and pigeons' blood rubies that fastened the 
costly laces upon the bosom of Madame la Marquise 
rose and fell at the bidding of a sigh. 

“I cried for days and days before my marriage with 
Frederic,” the little Marquise remarked complacently. 

“And I should cry at the bare idea of not being mar- 
ried at all!” said a fresh young voice, belonging to 


14 


A FADED ROMANCE 


Mademoiselle Lucie, who came up the steps from the 
garden with the skirt of her cambric morning frock full 
of autumn roses, her cheeks flushed to the hue of the 
pinkest La France. She dropped her pretty reverence 
to her grandmother, kissed her upon the hand, and her 
mother on the forehead, and turned her lapful of flowers 
out upon the table, where vases and bowls of Sevres and 
China ware stood to receive them, ready filled with wa- 
ter. ^‘You know I would. Grandmamma!” 

“It is a mistake either to laugh or to weep; one should 
smile only, or merely sigh,” said Grandmamma, with the 
charming air of philosophy that so became her. “One 
should neither take life too much to heart, nor make a 
jest of it, my little Lucie.” 

“Please go on with the story. Your gouvemante was 
asleep in the chair; Monsieur Varolan caricatured her. 
You were laughing at the drawing and at his droll face, 
as he rubbed it out, and then ” 

“Then a gentleman arrived, and I did not laugh any 
more.” Grandmamma took up her work, a delicate, 
spidery web of tatting, and the corners of her delicately 
chiseled lips, pink yet as faded azalea blossoms, quivered 
a little. “He was staying at the British Embassy with 
his brother-in-law, who was Military Attache, and 
whose name I have forgotten. He came to see his sis- 
ter’s portrait; it stood framed upon the easel — oh! but 
most beautiful and stately, with the calm, cold gaze, the 
strange poetic glamour of the North. He, too, was fair, 
very tall, with aquiline features, and light hazel eyes, 
very piercing in their regard, and yet capable of express- 
ing great tenderness. For Englishmen I have never 
cared, but Scotch gentlemen of high breeding have al- 
ways appeared to me quite unapproachable in ton, much 


A FADED ROMANCE 


15 


like the Bretons of old blood, with whom their type, in- 
deed, has much in common. But I am prosing quite in- 
tolerably, it seems to me!” said Grandmamma, with a 
heightened tint upon her lovely old cheeks and an em- 
barrassed laugh. 

Both Lucie and the little Marquise cried out in protes- 
tation. Lucie, snipping dead leaves from her roses, 
wanted to know whether Monsieur Varolan had pre- 
sented the strange Scotch gentleman to Grandmamma. 

“He did. At first he seemed to hesitate, glancing to- 
ward Mademoiselle Binet. But she slept soundly, and, 
indeed, with cause, having over-eaten herself that day at 
the twelve o’clock breakfast upon duck stewed with 
olives, pastry, and corn salad. An excellent creature, 
poor Binet, but with the failings of ces gens-ld, and you 
may be assured that I did not grudge her her repose 
while I conversed with Monsieur Angus Dunbar, who 
spoke French almost to perfection. How it was that I, 
who had been brought up by my mother with such abso- 
lute strictness, yielded to the entreaties of Monsieur 
Varolan, who was quite suddenly inspired with the idea 
of what afterward proved to be one of his greatest pic- 
tures, I cannot imagine,” said Grandmamma; “but it is 
certain that we posed together as the Lord of Nann and 
the Korrigan standing in the forest by the enchanted 
well. It would have been a terrible story to travel home 
to the Faubourg St. Germain, I knew, but Mademoiselle 
still slept sweetly, and out of girlish recklessness and 
gaiete de coeur I consented, and down came my long 
ropes of yellow hair, which had only been released from 
their schoolroom plait, and dressed in grown young-lady 
fashion six months before. Monsieur Varolan cried out, 
and clasped his hands in his impulsive southern way. 


16 


A FADED ROMANCE 


Monsieur Dunbar said nothing — then; but by his eyes 
one could tell, child as one was, that he was pleased. 
But when Varolan's sketch was dashed in, and the 
painter cried to us to descend from the model’s plat- 
form, Monsieur Dunbar leaned toward me and whis- 
pered, as he offered me his hand, ^If the fairy had been 
as beautiful as you, Mademoiselle’ — for Varolan had 
told him the story, and he had pronounced it to be the 
parallel of an antique Highland legend — ^‘had the fairy 
been as beautiful as you, the Lord of Nann would have 
forgotten the lady in the tower by the sea.’ He, as I 
have told you, my children, spoke French with great 
ease and remarkable purity; and something in the ear- 
nestness of his manner and the expression of his eyes — 
those light hazel, gleaming eyes” — Grandmamma’s deli- 
cate dove-colored silks rustled as she shuddered slightly 
— “caused me a thrill, but a thrill ” 

“Young girls are so absurdly impressionable,” began 
the little Marquise, with a glance at Lucie. “I remem- 
ber when our dancing master, hideous old M. Mouton, 
praised me for executing my steps with elegance, I would 
be in the seventh heaven.” 

“But this man was neither hideous, old, nor a dancing 
master, my dear,” said Grandmamma, a little annoyed. 
She took up her tatting, which had dropped upon her 
silver-gray lap, as though the story were ended, and Lu- 
cie’s face fell. 

“And is that all — absolutely all?” she cried. 

“Mademoiselle Binet woke up, and we went home to 
the Faubourg St. Germain to five o’clock tea — then the 
latest novelty imported from London; and she overate 
herself again — ^upon hot honey cake buttered to excess — 


A FADED ROMANCE 17 

and spoiled her appetite for supper,” said Grandmamma 
provokingly. 

^^And you never saw Monsieur Varolan or Monsieur 
D . . . — I cannot pronounce his name — again?” 

^‘Monsieur Varolan I saw again, several times in fact, 
for the portrait required it; and Monsieur Dunbar, quite 
by accident, called at the studio on several of these occa- 
sions.” 

*^And Mademoiselle Binet? Did she always fall asleep 
in the tapestry chair?” asked the little Marquise, with 
arching eyebrows. 

Grandmamma laughed, and her laugh was so clear, so 
sweet, and so mirthful that the almost living lips of the 
exquisite child portrayed upon the canvas bearing the 
signature of the dead Varolan seemed to smile in sympa- 
thy. 

“No, but she was occupied for all that. Monsieur 
Varolan had found out her weakness for confectionery, 
and there was always a large dish of chocolate 'pralines 
and cream puffs for her to nibble at after that first sit- 
ting. Poor, good creature, she conceived an immense 
admiration for Varolan; and Monsieur Dunbar treated 
her with a grave courtesy which delighted her. She had 
always imagined Scotchmen as savages, painted blue and 
feeding upon raw rabbits, she explained, until she had 
the happiness of meeting him.” 

“And he — what brought him from his bogs and moun- 
tains?” asked the little Marquise. “Was he qualifying 
for the diplomatic service, or studying art?” 

Grandmamma turned her brilliant eyes calmly upon 
the less aristocratic countenance of her daughter-in-law. 
“He was doing neither. He was staying in Paris in at- 
tendance upon his fiancee, who had come over to buy her 


18 


A FADED ROMANCE 


trousseau. I forget her name — she was the only daugh- 
ter of a baronet of Leicestershire, and an heiress. The 
match had been made by her family. Monsieur Dunbar, 
though poor, being the cadet of a great family and heir 
to an ancient title — his brother. Lord Hailhope, having 
in early youth sustained an accident in the gymnasium 
which rendered him a cripple for life.” 

^‘So a wife with a ‘dot^ was urgently required!” com- 
mented the little Marquise. “Let us hope she was not 
without esprit and a certain amount of good looks, in the 
interests of Monsieur Dunbar.” 

“I saw her on the night of my first ball,” said Grand- 
mamma, laying down her tatting and folding her deli- 
cate, ivory-tinted hands, adorned with a few rings of 
price, upon her dove-colored silk lap. “She had sandy 
hair, much drawn back from the forehead,, and pale eyes 
of china-blue, with the projecting teeth which the cari- 
catures of ^Cham’ gave to all Englishwomen. Also, her 
waist was rather flat, and her satin boots would have 
fitted a sapeur; but she had an agreeable expression, and 
I afterward heard her married life with Monsieur Dun- 
bar was fairly happy.” 

“And Monsieur himself — ^was he as happy with her as 
— as he might have been, supposing he had never visited 
Paris — never called at the studio of Varolan?” asked the 
little Marquise, with a peculiar intonation. 

Grandmamma’s rosary was of beautiful pearls. She 
let the shining things slide through her fingers medita- 
tively as she replied: 

“My daughter, I cannot say. We met at that ball — 
the last ball given at the Tuileries before the terrible 
events of the fifteenth of July. I presented Monsieur 
Dunbar to my mother. We danced together, conversed 


A FADED ROMANCE 


19 


lightly of our prospects; I felt a serrement de cceur, and 
he, Monsieur Dunbar, was very pale, with a peculiar ex- 
pression about the eyes and mouth which denoted vio- 
lent emotion strongly repressed. I had noticed it when 
Monsieur de Courvaux came to claim my hand for the 
second State quadrille. He wore his uniform as Minis- 
ter of Commerce and all his Orders. . . . His thick nose, 
white whiskers, dull eyes, and bent figure contrasted 
strangely with the fine features and splendid physique of 
Monsieur Dunbar. Ah, Heaven! how I shivered as he 
smiled at me with his false teeth, and pressed my hand 
within his arm. . . . He filled me with fear. And yet 
at heart I knew him to be good and disinterested and 
noble, even while I could have cried out to Angus to save 
me. . . . But I was whirled away. Everyone was very 
kind. The Empress, looking tall as a goddess, despotically 
magnificent in the plenitude of her charms, noticed me 
kindly. I danced with the Prince Imperial, a fresh- 
faced, gentle boy. Monsieur de Courvaux was much 
felicitated upon his choice, and Maman was pleased — 
that goes without saying. Thus I came back to Mon- 
sieur Dunbar. We were standing together in an alcove 
adorned with palms, admiring the porphyry vase, once 
the property of Catherine the Great, and given by the 
Emperor Alexander to the First Napoleon, when for the 
first time he took my hand. If I could paint in words 
the emotion that suddenly overwhelmed me! . . . It 
seemed as though the great personages, the distinguished 
crowds, the jeweled ladies, the uniformed men, van- 
ished, and the lustres and girandoles went out, and 
Angus and I were standing in pale moonlight on the 
shores of a lake encircled by mountains, looking in each 
other’s eyes. It matters little what we said, but the his- 


20 


A FADED ROMANCE 


tory of our first meeting might have prompted the son- 
net of Arvers. ... You recall it: 

‘‘Mon cceur a son secret, mon ame a son mystere, 

Un amour 6temel dans un instant congu: 

Le mal est sans remMe.” 

Sans remede for either of us. Honor was engaged on 
either side. So we parted,” said Grandmamma. “My 
bouquet of white tea-roses and ferns had lost a few buds 
when I put it in water upon reaching home.” 

“And ” 

“In three days I married Monsieur de Courvaux. As 
for Monsieur Dunbar ” 

“Lucie,” said the little Marquise, “run down to the 
bottom of the garden and listen for the horns!” 

“Monsieur Dunbar I never saw again,” said Grand- 
mamma, with a smile, “and there is no need for Lucie to 
run into the garden. Listen! One can hear the horns 
quite plainly; the boar has taken to the open — they are 
sounding the debuche. What do you want, Lebas?” 

The middle-aged, country-faced house steward was 
the medium of a humble entreaty on the part of one 
Auguste Pichon, a forest keeper, that Madame the Mar- 
quise would deign to hear him on behalf of the young 
woman, his sister, of whom Monsieur le Cure had al- 
ready spoken. This time, upon the exchange of a silent 
intelligence between the two elder ladies. Mademoiselle 
Lucie was really dismissed to the garden, and Pichon 
and his sister were shown in by Lebas. 

Pichon was a thick-set, blue-bearded, vigorous fellow 
of twenty-seven, wearing a leather gun pad strapped 
over his blouse, and cloth gaiters. He held his cap in 
both hands against his breast as he bowed to his 


A FADED ROMANCE 


21 


master’s mother and his master’s wife. His sister, a 
pale, sickly, laige-eyed little creature, scarcely ventured 
to raise her abashed glance from the Turkey carpet as 
Pichon plucked at her cotton sleeve. 

“We have heard the story from Monsieur le Cure,” 
cried the younger lady, “and both Madame la Marquise 
and myself are much shocked and grieved. Is it not so, 
Madame?” 

Grandmamma surveyed the bending, tempest-beaten 
figure before her with a sternness of the most august, yet 
with pity and interest too. 

“We did not anticipate when we had the pleasure of 
contributing a little sum to your sister’s dower, upon 
her marriage with the under-gardener, Pierre Michaud, 
that the union would be attended with anything but 
happiness.” 

“Alas! Nor did I, Madame. ... I picked out 
Michaud myself from half a dozen others. ^Here’s a 
sound, hale man of sixty,’ thinks I, ‘will make the girl a 
good husband, and leave her a warm widow when he 
dies’; for he has a bit put by, as is well known. And she 
was willing when he asked her to go before the Maire 
and Monsieur le Cure and sign herself Michaud instead 
of Pichon. Weren’t you, girl?” 

No answer from the culprit but a sob. 

“So, as she was willing and Michaud was eager, the 
wedding came off. At the dance, for it’s a poor foot that 
doesn’t hop at a wedding, what happens? Latrace, Mon- 
sieur le Marquis’s new groom, drops in. He dances with 
the bride, drops a few sweet speeches in her ear. Crac! 
’Tis like sowing mustard and cress. . . . Latrace scrapes 
acquaintance with Michaud — more fool he, with respect 
to the ladies’ presence, for when one has a drop of honey 


22 


A FADED ROMANCE 


one doesn't care to share with the wasp! Latrace takes 
to hanging about the cottage. Ninette, the silly thing, 
begins to gape at the moon, and when what might be 
expected to happen happens, Michaud turns her out of 
house and home. What's more, keeps her dowry, to pay 
for his honor, says he. ‘Honor! leave honor to gentle- 
men; wipe out scores with a stick!’ says I, ‘and eat one's 
cabbage soup in peace.' But he’ll bolt the door and stick 
to the dowry, and Ninette may beg, or worse, for all he 
cares. And my wife flies out on the poor thing; and 
what to do with her may the good God teach me. . . . 
Madame will understand that who provides for her 
keeps two! And she so young, Madame, only seven- 
teen!” 

The little Marquise uttered a pitying exclamation, and 
over the face of the elder lady passed a swift change. 
The exquisite faded lips quivered, the brilliant eyes un- 
der the worn eyelids shone through a liquid veil of tears. 
Rustling in her rich neutral-tinted silks, Madame rose, 
went to the shrinking figure, and stooping from her 
stately height, kissed Ninette impulsively upon both 
cheeks. 

“Poor child! Poor little one!” whispered Grand- 
mamma; and at the caress and the whisper, the girl 
dropped upon her knees with a wild, sobbing cry, and 
hid her face in the folds of what seemed to her an angel's 
robe. “Leave Ninette to us, my good Pichon,” said 
Grandmamma. “For the present the Sisters of the Con- 
vent at Charny will take her, all expenses being guaran- 
teed by me, and when she is stronger we will talk of 
what is to be done.” She raised the crying girl, passing 
a gentle hand over the bowed head and the convulsed 
shoulders. “Life is not all ended because one has made 


A FADED ROMANCE 


2S 


one mistake!’^ said Grandmamma. “Tell Madame 
Pichon that, from me!’^ 

Pichon, crushing his cap, bowed and stammered grati- 
tude, and backed out, leading the girl, who turned upon 
the threshold to send one passionate glance of gratitude 
from her great, melancholy, black eyes at the beautiful 
stately figure with the gold-gray hair, clad in shining 
silks and costly lace. As the door closed upon the 
homely figures, the little Marquise heaved a sigh of re- 
lief. 

“Ouf! Pitiable as it all is, one can hardly expect any- 
thing better. The standard of morality is elevated in 
proportion to the standard of rank, the caliber of intel- 
lect, the level of refinement. Do you not agree with 
me?’^ 

Grandmamma smiled. “Are we of the upper world so 
extremely moral 

The little Marquise pouted. 

^^Noblesse oblige is an admirable apothegm, but does 
it keep members of our order from the Courts of Di- 
vorce? My dear Augustine, reflect, and you will come 
to the conclusion that there is really very little difference 
in human beings. The texture of the skin, the shape of 
the fingernails, cleanliness, correct grammar, and grace- 
ful manners do not argue superior virtue, or greater 
probity of mind, or increased power to resist tempta- 
tion, but very often the reverse. This poor girl married 
an uninteresting, elderly man at the very moment when 
her heart awakened at the sight and the voice of one 
whom she was destined to love. . . . Circumstances, en- 
vironments, opportunities contributed to her defeat; but 
I will answer for it she has known moments of abnega- 
tion as lofty, struggles as desperate, triumphs of con- 


24 


A FADED ROMANCE 


science over instinct as noble, as delicate, and as touch- 
ing as those experienced by any Lucretia of the Rue 
Tronchet or the Faubourg Saint-Honore. She has been 
beaten, that is all, worsted in the conflict; and it is for 
us, who are women like herself, to help her to rise. But 
I prose,” said Grandmamma; “I sound to myself like a 
dull tract or an indifferent sermon. And Lucie must be 
getting tired of the garden!” 

Grandmamma moved toward the open hattants of the 
glass doors to call Mademoiselle, but arrested her steps 
to answer the interrogation which rose in the eyes, but 
never reached the lips, of the little Marquise. “I have 
said, my dear, that we never met again. Whether Mon- 
sieur Angus Dunbar was nobler and stronger than other 
men — whether I was braver and purer than others of my 
sex — this was a question which never came to the test. 
Fate kept us apart, and something in which Monsieur le 
Cure, and perhaps ourselves, would recognize the hand of 
Heaven!” 

Grandmamma went out through the glass doors and 
stood upon the perron, breathing the delicious air. The 
sun was drowning in a sea of molten gold, the sweet 
clamor of the horns came from an island in the shal- 
low river. “Gone to the water! Gone to the water!” 
they played. . . . And then the death of the boar was 
sounded in the hallali. But a nobler passion than that 
of the hunter, who follows and slays for the mere mo- 
mentary lust of possession, shone in the exquisite old 
face that lifted to the sunset the yearning of a deathless 
love. 


A FADED ROMANCE 


«5 


n 

The boar, a ragot, had met his end at the point of the 
Marquis's hunting knife, an ancestral couteau de chasse 
with a blade about three feet long. The field had dis- 
persed, one or two of the valets de chien gone after the 
missing hounds, leading the decoy dogs on leashes. Aft- 
ernoon tea at the chateau was a very lively affair, the 
clatter of tongues, cups, and teaspoons almost deafening. 
A cuirassier, whose polished boot had suffered abrasion 
from the tusk of the wounded animal, recounted his ad- 
venture to a circle of sympathetic ladies. A fire of 
beech logs blazea on the wide hearth, the leaping fiames 
playing a color symphony, from peacock green to 
sapphire, from ruby to orange, dying into palest lemon- 
yellow, leaping up in lilac, deepening to violet, and so 
da capo. . . . The silver andirons had sphinx heads 
adorned with full-bottomed periwigs of the period of 
Louis le Grand. . . . The exquisite Watteaus and 
Bouchers, set in the paneling — painted white because the 
little Marquise had found oak so triste — shone with a 
subdued splendor. The perfume of fine tobacco, green 
tea, and many roses, loaded the atmosphere, producing 
a mild intoxication in the brain of the tall, fair, well- 
dressed young fellow, unmistakably British, whom a 
servant had announced as Monsieur Brown. . . . 

^‘Monsieur Brown?” Monsieur de Courvaux read the 
card passed over to him by his wife. “Who under the 
sun is Monsieur Brown?” 

“Fie, Frederic!” rebuked the little Marquise. “It is 
the English tutor!” 

Then they rose together and welcomed the newcomer 


A FADED ROMANCE 


26 

with hospitable warmth. Charny les Bois was hideously 
diflBcult of access; the railway from the junction at 
which one had to change was a single line, and a perfect 
disgrace. Monsieur de Courvaux had long intended to 
bring the question — a burning one — before the proper 
authorities. Both Monsieur and Madame were horrified 
to realize that Monsieur Brown had walked from the 
station, where cabs were conspicuous by their absence. 
A conveyance had been ordered to be sent, but at the last 
moment it was wanted for the hunt. Monsieur Brown 
had hunted in England, of course? 

Mr. Brown admitted that he had followed the hounds 
in several counties. Looking at the new tutor’s square 
shoulders, sinewy frame, long, well-made limbs, and 
firmly knit, supple hands, tanned like his face and throat 
by outdoor exercise, Monsieur de Courvaux did not doubt 
it. Brown came of good race, that was clear at the first 
glance. Harrow and Oxford had added the cachet of 
the high public school and the university. He had rec- 
ommendations from the Duke of Atholblair, who men- 
tioned him as the son of a dear old friend. And Athol- 
blair was of the old regime, a great nobleman who chose 
his friends with discretion. Clearly Brown would do. 
His French was singularly pure; his English was the 
English of the upper classes. Absolutely, Brown was the 
thing. He was, he said, a Scotchman. The late Queen 
of England, to whom the little Marquise had the honor 
of being god-daughter’s daughter, had had a valuable at- 
tendant — also a Scotchman — of the name of Brown! Did 
Monsieur Brown happen to be any relation? 

^‘Unhappily no, Madame!” said Mr. Brown, who 
seemed rather tickled by the notion. He took the next 
opportunity to laugh, and did it heartily. He was stand- 


A FADED ROMANCE 


27 


ing on the bearskin before the fireplace, measuring an 
equal six feet of height with Monsieur de Courvaux, 
when he laughed, and several people, grouped about a 
central figure — that of the elder Madame de Courvaux, 
who sat upon a gilt fauteuil with her back to the great 
windows, beyond which the fires of the sunset were 
burning rapidly away — the people glanced round. 

^‘What a handsome Englishman!” a lady whispered, a 
tiny brunette, with eyes of jet and ebony hair, who con- 
sequently adored the hazel-eyed, the tawny-haired, the 
tall of the opposite sex. Madame de Courvaux, superb 
in her laces and dove-colored silks, sat like a figure of 
marble. Under her broad white brow, crowned by its 
waves of gray-gold hair, her eyes, blue and brilliant still, 
fixed with an intensity of regard almost devouring upon 
the face of the new tutor, whom the Marquis, stepping 
forward, presented to his mother with due ceremony, and 
to whom, offering her white, jeweled hand, she said: 

^‘Welcome once more to France, Monsieur Dunbar!” 

^^But, Mamma,” put in Monsieur de Courvaux, as 
young Mr. Brown started and crimsoned to the roots of 
his tawny hair, ‘^the name of Monsieur is Brown, and he 
has never before visited our country.” 

^^Monsieur Brown will pardon me!” Madame de 
Courvaux rose to her full height and swept the aston- 
ished young fellow a wonderful curtsy. “The old are 
apt to make mistakes. And — there sounds the dressing 
gong!” 

Indeed, the metallic tintamarre of the instrument 
named began at that instant, and the great room emp- 
tied as the chatterers and tea drinkers scurried away. A 
rosy, civil footman in plain black livery showed Mr. 
Brown to his room, which was not unreasonably high 


28 


A FADED ROMANCE 


up, and boasted a dressing cabinet and a bath. As 
Brown hurriedly removed the smuts of the railway with 
oceans of soap and water, and got into his evening 
clothes — much too new and well cut for a tutor — he pon- 
dered. As he shook some attar of violets — much too ex- 
pensive a perfume for a tutor, who, at the most, should 
content himself with Eau de Cologne of the ninepenny 
brand — upon his handkerchief, he shook his head. 

“I’ll be shot if she didn’t, and plainly too! It wasn’t 
the confusion of the beastly all-night train journey from 
Paris. It wasn’t the clatter of French talk, or the de- 
lusion of a guilty conscience — decidedly not! The thing 
is as certain as it is inexplicable! I arrive under the 
name of Brown at a country house in a country I don’t 
know, belonging to people I have never met, and the 
second lady I am introduced to addresses me as Mr. 
Dunbar. There’s the second gong! I wonder whether 
there is a governess for me to take in, or whether I trot 
behind my superiors, who aren’t paid a hundred and fifty 
pounds a year to teach English?” 

And Mr. Brown went down to dinner. Somewhat to 
his surprise, he was placed impartially, served without 
prejudice, and conversed with as an equal. The De 
Courvaux were charming people, their tutor thought — 
equal to the best-bred Britons he had ever met. His 
pupils — the freckled boy with hair cropped d la brossCf 
and the pretty, frank-mannered girl of sixteen — inter- 
ested him. He was uncommonly obliged to the kind old 
Duke for his recommendation; the bread of servitude 
eaten under this hospitable roof would have no bitter 
herbs mingled with it, that was plain. He helped him- 
self to an entree of calves’ tongues stewed with mush- 
rooms, as he thought this, and noted the violet bouquet 


A FADED ROMANCE 


29 


of the old Bordeaux with which one of the ripe- faced, 
black-liveried footmen filled his glass. And perhaps he 
thought of another table, at the bottom of which his 
place had been always laid, and of the grim, gaunt din- 
ing-room in which it stood, with the targets and breast- 
pieces, the chain and plate mail of his — Brown’s — fore- 
bears winking against the deep lusterless black of the 
antique paneling; and, opposite, lost in deep reflection, 
the master of the house, moody, haggard, gray-mous- 
tached and gray-haired, but eminently handsome still, 
leaning his head upon his hand, and staring at the gold 
and ruby reflections of the wine decanters in the polished 
surface of the ancient oak, or staring straight before him 
at the portrait, so oddly out of keeping with the Lord 
Neils and Lord Ronalds in tartans and powdered wigs, 
the Lady Agnes and the Lady Jean in hoops and stom- 
achers, with their hair dressed over cushions, and shep- 
herds’ crooks in their narrow, yellowish hands. . . . 
That portrait, of an exquisite girl — a lily-faced, gold- 
haired, blue-eyed child in the ball costume of 1870 — 
had been the object of Mr. Brown’s boyish adoration. 
Varolan painted it, Mr. Brown’s uncle — whose name 
was no more Brown than his nephew’s — had often said. 
And on one occasion, years previously, he had expanded 
sufiiciently to tell his nephew and expectant heir that 
the original of the portrait was the daughter of a ducal 
family of France, a star moving in the social orbit of 
the Faubourg Saint-Germain, married to a Minister of 
the Imperial Government a few weeks previous to that 
Government’s collapse and fall. 

“I believe the dear old boy must have been in love 
with her before Uncle Ronald died, and he came in for 
the family honors,” mused Mr. Brown, and then began 


30 


A FADED ROMANCE 


to wonder whether he had treated the dear old boy badly 
or vice versa. For between this uncle and nephew, who, 
despite a certain chilly stiffness and rigor of mental 
bearing, often mutually exhibited by relations, were sin- 
cerely attached to each other, a breach had opened, an 
estrangement had occurred. Hot words and bitter re- 
proaches had suddenly, unexpectedly been exchanged, old 
wrongs flaming up at a kindling word, forgotten grudges 
coming to light in the blaze of the conflagration. . . . 

And so it had come to pass that the son of Lord Hail- 
hope^s younger brother, named Angus after his uncle, had 
not been thrown, had hurled himself upon his own re- 
sources. And the Duke of Atholblair had found him the 
place of English tutor in the family of Madame de Cour- 
vaux. 

“It is the only thing that presents itself,’^ the aged 
peer had explained, “and therefore, my dear boy, you 
had better take it until something better turns up.” 

For the present. But the future? Mr. Brown won- 
dered whether he and the English grammar and lexicon 
— the phrase book, dictionary, and the other volumes 
which constituted his tutorial equipment — were doomed 
to grow gray and dog’s-eared, drooping and shabby to- 
gether? 

Then he looked up, for some one touched him upon 
the arm. 

“The ladies permit us to smoke in the library, which 
is the best room for music in the house,” said the pleas- 
ant voice of Monsieur de Courvaux; “'so we will take our 
cafe and chasse in their company, if you please.” 

Mr. Brown reached the door in time to open it, and 
to comprehend that the act of gallantry was not ex- 
pected of him. And the feminine paroquets and the 


A FADED ROMANCE 


31 


sable-coated male rooks went by, and Mademoiselle Lu- 
cie gave the handsome, well-groomed Englishman a shy 
glance of approval from under her black eyelashes, and 
Monsieur Frederic, puffy with incipient indigestion, 
grinned feebly. Brown put his hand upon the boy^s 
shoulder, and followed the rest. 

‘^You don’t want me to do any English to-night, do 
you. Monsieur Brown?” young hopeful insinuated, as 
they went into the long walnut-paneled room with an- 
other bay at the southern end with blinds undrawn, re- 
vealing a wonderful panorama of moonlit forest and 
river and champaign. ^‘1 can say ‘all-a-raight!’ Vat-a- 
rot!’ and Maddle-doo!’ already,” the youth continued. 
‘^The English groom of papa, I learned the words of him, 
voyez! You shall know Smeet, to-morrow!” 

“Thanks, old fellow!” said Mr. Brown, with a good- 
humored smile. 

“Grandmamma is making a sign that you are to go 
and speak to her. Monsieur,” said Mademoiselle Lucie, 
Brown’s elder pupil-elect. “Everybody in this house 
obeys Grandmamma, and so must you. Mamma says it 
is because she was so beautiful when she was young — 
young, you comprehend, as in that portrait over the fire- 
place — that everybody fell down and worshiped her. 
And she is beautiful now, is she not, sir? Not as the 
portrait; but ” 

“The portrait. Mademoiselle? . . . Over the fire- 
place. . . . Good Lord, what an extraordinary like- 
ness!” broke from Mr. Brown. For the counterpart of 
the exquisite picture of Varolan that had hung in the 
dining hall of the gray old northern castle where Mr. 
Brown’s boyhood, youth, and earliest manhood had been 


32 


A FADED ROMANCE 


spent, hung above the hooded fifteenth-century fireplace 
of the noble library of this French chateau. 

There she stood, the golden, slender, lily-faced, 
sapphire-eyed young aristocrat of the Faubourg Saint- 
Germain, with her indefinable air of pride and hauteur 
and exclusiveness mingled with girlish merriment and 
mischief. And there she sat — the original in the flesh — 
Madame la Marquise de Courvaux, the Grandmamma of 
these young people — regal in sweeping folds of amethyst 
velvet and wonderful creamy Spanish point lace. 

Obedient to the bidding of her fan, Mr. Brown crossed 
the library and took the chair she indicated near her. 
And the diamond cross upon her still beautiful bosom 
moved quickly, with the beating of Grandmamma’s 
heart, as he did this. 

“How like he is! — how like!” she whispered to her- 
self; and the electric lights became crystal girandoles, 
and the library became a ballroom at the Tuileries. The 
Empress, beautiful and cold, passed down the ranks of 
curtsying, bare-backed, bejeweled women and bowing, 
gold-laced men. Monsieur de Courvaux, with his orders, 
his bald forehead, and his white whiskers, released 
mademoiselle at the claim of a tall, tawny-haired, hazel- 
eyed, fair-faced partner, a Highland gentleman, in plaid 
and philabeg, with sporran and claymore, the antique 
gold brooch upon his shoulder set with ancient ame- 
thysts, river pearls and cairngorms. And he told her 
how he loved her, there in the alcove of palms, and heard 
her little confession that, had she not been bound by a 
promise of marriage to Monsieur de Courvaux she would 
— oh, how gladly! — become the wife of Monsieur Angus 
Dunbar. 

“As you say. . . . Fate has been cruel to both of us. 


A FADED ROMANCE 


33 


. . . And — and I am engaged. She lives in Leicester- 
shire. I met her one hunting season. She is in Paris, 
staying at Meurice’s with her mother now. They’re 
buying the trousseau. . . . God help me!” groaned An- 
gus Dunbar. 

But the little lady of the Faubourg Saint-Germain 
drew back the hand he snatched at, and swept him a 
haughty little curtsy, looking straight in his face: ^‘The 
State Quadrille is beginning. Be so good as to take me 
to Mamma. . . . And I wish you all happiness, sir, and 
your fiancee also.” Another little curtsy he got, poor 
lad, with her ^^Adieu, and a thousand thanks. Monsieur!” 
and then — he walked the dusty streets of Paris until 
morning; while Mademoiselle lay sleepless on her tear- 
drenched lace pillows. And 

Grandmamma awakened as though from a dream, to 
meet the frank hazel eyes of Mr. Brown, the English 
tutor. 

“Monsieur will forgive the curiosity of an old woman,” 
she said, with her inimitable air of grace and sweetness. 
“I wished to ask whether you were not of Northern race 
— a Scot, for example? Yes? Ah, I thought I had 
guessed correctly. The type is not to be mistaken, and I 
once had — a dear friend! — whom Monsieur resembles to 
identity. But his name was not Brown.” 

“I was within an ace of telling her mine was not, 
either,” reflected the English tutor as, an hour or so later, 
he got into bed. “How perfectly beautiful Madame — 
not the agagante, espiegle little Madame, but the old one 
— must have been in the rich prime of her womanhood! 
Did she and my uncle ever meet again, I wonder? No, 
I should think not. The dear old boy is just the sort of 
character to hug a romance all his life, and she — she is 


34 


A FADED ROMANCE 


just the woman to be the heroine of one. Are all French 
country-house beds in this style, and is one supposed to 
draw these rosebudded chintz curtains modestly round 
one, or let them alone?” Mr. Brown concluded to let 
them alone, and fell very soundly asleep. 

At the late breakfast, an elaborate meal, beginning 
with soup and fish, and ending with tea and cakes, it 
was explained to the tutor that no English lesson was to 
be given that day, as a costume ball of the calico type 
was to take place that evening, and the children’s study, 
a homely, comfortable little wainscoted parlor on the 
ground floor, looking out upon a grass-grown courtyard 
with a bronze fountain in the middle, was to be given up 
to hats, coats, and opera cloaks. Monsieur Frederic was 
to personate one of his own ancestors, page to the Duke 
of Burgundy, killed in a jousting match in 1369, Mon- 
sieur le Marquis and Madame respectively appearing as 
the Chevalier de Courvaux and his lady, parents of the 
youth referred to, represented in a miniature by Othea. 
Mademoiselle Lucie chose to be ‘‘Undine” in gauze and 
water-lilies. For Monsieur Brown a character could 
surely be found, a costume devised, even at the eleventh 
hour. There were jack-boots, salades, and coats of mail 
innumerable in the great hall. Mr. Brown, who shared 
the objection of his British countrymen to being made 
to appear ridiculous, shook his head. He preferred not 
to dress up; but he had, or thought he had, packed away 
in one of his portmanteaux (which were too numerous 
for a tutor) something that would do. A Highland cos- 
tume, in fact, of the modified kind worn by gentlemen 
of Caledonia as dinner dress or upon occasions of fes- 
tivity. 

Thus Mr. Brown imconsciously pledged himself to 


A FADED ROMANCE 


35 


bring about a crisis in the lives of two people, one of 
whom was actively engaged at that moment in trying to 
find him. For Lord Hailhope was genuinely attached to 
his nephew, and the basis of the quarrel between them, 
never very secure, had been shaken and shattered, firstly, 
by the indifference manifested by the young lady con- 
cerned, a rather plain young heiress, at the news of the 
said nephew’s disappearance, and, secondly, by her mar- 
riage with her father’s chaplain, a Presbyterian divine 
of thunderous eloquence and sweeping predestinary con- 
victions. 

^‘Tell him that I was in the wrong — that I apologize — 
that everything shall be as it was before, if he will come 
back! The money shall be secured to him; I will guar- 
antee that,” Lord Hailhope wrote to the London solicitor 
employed in the search for Young Lochinvar, who had 
sprung to the saddle and ridden away — without the lady. 
^Tf he will not come to me, I will go to him. The insult 
was gross ; I admit it, and will atone to the best of my 
ability I” 

^‘The hot-headed old Highlander!” commented the man 
of law, as he filed the letter. “He adopts the boy — his 
dead brother’s son — brings him up in the expectation of 
inheriting his private fortune as well as the title, and 
then turns him out of doors because he won’t marry a 
girl with teeth like tombstones and a fancy for another 
man. If Master Angus Dunbar is wise, he will hold out 
against going back until that question of the money has 
been disposed of irrevocably. Though people never have 
sense — lucky for my profession!” 

Meanwhile, at Charny les Bois preparations for the 
ball — the materials of which owed much more to the 
lordly silkworm than the plebeian cotton pod — ^went on 


36 


A FADED ROMANCE 


apace. Evening came, the band of the cuirassiers ^ gen- 
erously lent by Monsieur the Colonel, drove over from 
the barracks in a couple of chars-d-bancs, the Colonel 
and the officers of that gallant regiment, arrayed to kill 
in the green and gold costumes of the hunt of the Grand 
Monarque, followed upon their English dr ague. Voitures 
of every description disgorged their happy loads. Mon- 
sieur, Madame, the young ladies and the young gentle- 
men, hot, happy, smiling, and fearfully and wonderfully 
disguised. 

“Their unconsciousness, the entire absence of the con- 
viction that they are ridiculous, makes them quite lov- 
able,” thought Mr. Brown. “That fat, fair papa, with 
spectacles and large sandy whiskers, as Pluton, from 
Orphee aux Enjers, in red satin tunic and black silk 
tights spotted with yellow, a satin cloak with a train, 
a gilt pasteboard crown and trident pleases me tremen- 
dously. He is, I believe, a magistrate from Charny. His 
wife is the even fatter and fairer lady attired as Norma, 
and those three little dumpy girls, flower girls of a period 
decidedly uncertain.” 

“Does not Monsieur dance?” said Mademoiselle Lucie, 
looking, with her filmy green draperies, her fair locks 
crowned, and her slim waist girdled with water-lilies and 
forget-me-nots, a really exquisite river sprite. 

“If Mademoiselle would accord me the honor of her 
hand in a valse,” Mr. Brown began; then he broke off, 
remembering that in England the tutor did not usually 
dance with the daughters of the house — if, indeed, that 
functionary danced at all. But 

“Mamma has been telling me that Englishmen dance 
badly,” observed Mademoiselle, with a twinkle in her 
blue eyes. “Grandmamma will have it, by the way, that 


A FADED ROMANCE 


37 


you are Scotch! Do not look round for her; she was a 
little fatigued by so much conversation and fuss, and 
will not come down to-night. . . . Heavens! look at 
Frederic,” she added, in a tone of sisterly solicitude, as 
the page of the Court of Burgundy moved unsteadily 
into sight, clinging to the arm of a bosom friend in a 
“celadon” costume and a condition of similar obfusca- 
tion. “Alas! I comprehend!” she continued. “Those 
plums conserved in cognac have a fatal fascination for 
my unhappy brother. Quick, Monsieur! make to re- 
move him from the view of Papa, or the consequences 
will be of the most terrible. . . . Frederic has been al- 
ready warned. . . .” 

And outwardly grave and sympathetic, albeit splitting 
with repressed laughter, Mr. Brown went in chase of the 
unseasoned vessels, and conveyed them to the safe har- 
bor of the small study on the second floor, which had 
been allotted to him as a den. Locking them in, he was 
about to descend in search of seltzer water, when, in the 
act of crossing the gallery, unlighted save for the daz- 
zling moonlight that poured through the long mullioned 
windows, giving a strange semblance of fantastic life to 
the dark family portraits on the opposite wall, and lying 
in silver pools upon the shining parquet islanded with 
threadbare carpets of ancient Oriental woof, he encoun- 
tered the elder Madame de Courvaux, who came swiftly 
toward him from the opposite end of a long gallery, car- 
rying a light and a book that looked like a Catholic 
breviary. With the glamour of moonlight upon her, in 
a loose silken dressing robe trimmed with the priceless 
lace she affected, her wealth of golden-gray tresses in 
two massive plaits, drawn forward and hanging over her 
bosom, almost to her knees, her beauty was marvelous. 


A FADED ROMANCE 


Mr. Brown caught his breath and stopped short; Ma- 
dame, on her part, uttered a faint cry — was it of delight 
or of terror? — and would have dropped her candle had 
not the tutor caught it and placed it on a console that 
stood near. 

“Pardon, Madame!’^ he was beginning, when . . . 

“Oh, Angus Dunbar! Angus, my beloved, my adored!’^ 
broke from Madame de Courvaux. “There is no need 
that either of us should ask for pardon.’’ Her blue eyes 
gleamed like sapphires, her still beautiful bosom heaved 
and panted, her lips smiled, though the great tears 
brimmed one by one over her underlids and chased down 
her pale cheeks. “We did what was right. The path of 
honor was never easy. You married, and I also, and all 
these years no news of you has reached me. But I un- 
derstand now that you are dead, and bound no longer by 
the vows of earth, and that you have come, brave as of 
old, beautiful as of old, to tell me that you are free!” 

With an impulse never quite to be accounted for, An- 
gus Dunbar, the younger, stepped forward and enclosed 
in his own warm, living grasp Madame ’s trembling 
hands. . . . 

“My name is Angus Dunbar, Madame,” he said, “but 
— but I believe you must be speaking of my uncle. He 
succeeded to the peerage twenty years ago; he is now 
Lord Hailhope, but he — he never married, though I be- 
lieve he loved, very sincerely and devotedly, a lady 
whose portrait by Varolan hangs in the dining-room at 
Hailhope, just as it hangs in the library here at Charny 
les Bois.” 

“I — I do not understand. . . . How comes it that 
” Madame hesitated piteously, her hands wring- 
ing each other, her great wistful eyes fixed upon the 


A FADED ROMANCE 89 

splendid, stalwart figure of the young man. ^'You are 
so like. . . . And the costume ” 

^‘It is customary for Highland gentlemen to wear the 
kilt at social functions; and when I left Hailhope — or, 
rather, was turned out of doors, for my uncle disowned 
me when I refused to marry a girl who did not care for 
me, and who has since married to please herself — Gregor 
packed it in one of my kit cases. The cat is out of the 
bag as well as the kilt. ... I came here as English 
tutor to your grandchildren, Madame, at the suggestion 
of an old friend, the Duke of Atholblair, to whom I told 
the story of the quarrel with my uncle.’’ 

Madame began to recover her courtly grace and self- 
possession. Her hands ceased to tremble in Dunbar’s 
clasp ; she drew them away with a smile that was only a 
little fluttered. 

^And I took you for a ghost ... a revenant. ... I 
was a little agitated. ... I had been suffering from an 
attack of the nerves. . . . Monsieur will make allow- 
ances for a superstitious old woman. To-morrow, after 
breakfast, in the garden Monsieur will explain the whole 
story to me — how it came that Monsieur Dunbar, his 
uncle, now Lord Hailhope — ah, yes ! there was a crippled 
elder brother of that title — disowned his nephew for re- 
fusing to give his hand to one he did not love. ... I 
should have imagined Good-night, Monsieur!” * 

In the garden, after breakfast, Angus Dunbar, no 
longer handicapped by the plebeian name of Brown, told 
his story to a sympathetic listener. Madame’s head was 
bent — ^perhaps her hearing was not so good as it had 
been when, more than forty years previously, Angus 
Dunbar, the elder, had whispered his secret in that deli- 
cate ear. But as footsteps sounded upon the terrace, and 


40 


A FADED ROMANCE 


one of the fresh-faced, black-liveried footmen appeared, 
piloting a stranger, a tall, somewhat stern- featured, gray- 
moustached gentleman, she started and looked round. In 
the same moment the late Mr. Brown jumped up, over- 
setting his chair, the pugs barked, and 

“I owed it to you to make the first move,’^ said Lord 
Hailhope, rather huskily, as the uncle and nephew 
grasped hands. “Forgive me, Angus, my dear boy!” 

“Lady Grisel has married the Presbyterian minister, 
sir, and we’re all going to be happy for ever after, like 
people in a fairy tale,” said Angus Dunbar. Then he 
turned to Madame de Courvaux, and bowed with his 
best grace. “Madame, permit me to present my uncle. 
Lord Hailhope, who I believe has had the honor of meet- 
ing you before!” 

And, being possessed of a degree of discretion quite 
proper and desirable in a tutor, Mr. Angus Dunbar 
moved away in the direction of a rose walk, down which 
Mademoiselle Lucie’s white gown had fiitted a moment 
before, leaving the two old lovers looking in each other’s 
eyes. 


AN INDIAN BABY 


W HEN old Lovelace-Legge sank into a stertorous 
final coma which his lovely marble tombstone 
called by a much prettier name, and the blinds were 
drawn up after a decent interval, and a tremendous 
heraldic joke, furnished by Heralds’ College, was dis- 
mounted from over the front door, Mrs. Lovelace-Legge, 
after the requisite period of seclusion, took an exquisite 
little gem of a house in Sloane Street, furnished it to a 
marvel, and began, with discreetness, to enjoy herself. 
All her affairs fiourished, her pet plans prospered, her 
gratifications were many, her disappointments nil; peo- 
ple began to call her ^‘Lucky Lotta Legge.” She took 
her good fortune as her due. 

^Terhaps she feels she deserves something of Provi- 
dence for putting up patiently with old Lovelace-Legge 
during those ten awful years,” said Lady Cranberry, her 
dearest friend, to another just a shade less dear, as they 
walked up Sloane Street one fine morning. 

^‘I suppose he was awful?” hazarded the second-best 
beloved. 

Lady Cranberry crumpled her eyebrows. ^^He had a 
complexion like New Zealand meat,” she said. ^^Next 
time you walk up the King’s Road with Lotta, watch her 
as you pass a cheap butcher’s shop. She will wince and 
look the other way, and you may guess what she is 
thinking of, poor darling!” 


41 


42 


AN INDIAN BABY 


“She said to me once,” remarked the second-best one, 
“^7 always fretted for children, but perhaps they were 
wisely withheld^ ” 

“I should think so,” consented Lady Cranberry. 
“When there is a chance of an infant’s coming into the 
world with three chins and a nose like Punch, to say 
nothing of bandy legs and patent shoes like bicycle gear 
cases ” 

The second-best reminded Lady Cranberry that chil- 
dren were not usually born with shoes. 

“Of course, I meant feet,” said Lady Cranberry. “Feet 
of that size and flatness, too. And if there is the merest 
chance of a child’s coming into the world thus handi- 
capped, it is infinitely better that the child should keep 
out of it. Here we are at Lotta’s door. Isn’t that cream 
enamel with the old Florentine copper-embossed knocker 
and bells too divine for anything? Great Heavens!” 

She had evidently received a shock, for she was paler 
than her powder, and as she clutched her companion’s 
arm her eyes were fixed in quite a ghastly stare. 

“Mercy!” the next best-beloved friend of the owner of 
the cream-white door with the Florentine copper work 
adjuncts exclaimed, “you saw something — what?” 

But Lady Cranberry, with more energy than her weak 
state seemed to warrant, had ascended Mrs. Lovelace- 
Legge’s brown doorsteps, and was plying the Florentine 
knocker. The servant who responded to the summons 
thought that Mrs. Lovelace-Legge was at home, but 
knew her to be profoundly engaged. 

“Take up the names. We will wait,” said Lady Cran- 
berry. Then, as the respectful servant went upstairs, she 
drew her companion into the shelter of a little reposeful 
niche, in Liberty draperies and Indian carved wood* 


AN INDIAN BABY 


43 


where palms and things flourished in pots, and an object 
of familiar shape, in bamboo work, and newly freed 
from swathings of brown paper, stood upon a table. To 
this she pointed with a neatly gloved forefinger that 
trembled with emotion. 

^‘Oh! Why,’’ cried the other, ^^it is a baby’s cradle!” 

“It was delivered,” said Lady Cranberry, “at this door 
as we came up. It cannot be for a doll: it is full-sized. 
What on earth can Lotta want with such a thing?” 

As she uttered these words the servant returned. His 
mistress begged the ladies to come upstairs. He deliv- 
ered his message, and then, with well-trained gravity, 
lifted the compromising cradle and led the way upstairs. 
Mrs. Lovelace-Legge did not purpose to receive her 
friends in the drawing-room, it appeared, or even on the 
floor above, where her bedroom and boudoir were situ- 
ated. The ladies were conducted by their guide to re- 
gions more airy still; indeed, their progress knew no 
pause until they reached the highest landing. Here Lady 
Cranberry received another shock, for a gaily-painted 
wooden gate, newly hung, gave access to a space where 
a rocking-horse stood rampant in all the glory of bright 
paint and red leather trappings; and beyond, through an 
open door, shone a glimpse of an infantile Paradise, all 
rosebud dimity, blue ribbons, and brightness, in the midst 
of which moved Mrs. Lovelace-Legge radiant in a lawn 
apron with Valenciennes insertion, issuing directions to 
a head nurse of matronly proportions, an under-nurse of 
less discretionary years, and a young person dressed in 
blue baize, trimmed with red braid and buttons, whose 
functions were less determinable. 

“My dears!” Mrs. Lovelace-Legge fluttered to her 
friends and kissed them, and nothing save Lady Cran- 


44 


AN INDIAN BABY 


berry’s imperative need of an explanation kept that lady 
from swooning on the spot. “You find me all anyhow,” 
said Lotta, with beaming eyes. “But come — come and 
look!” She pioneered the way into the room beyond, 
with its Lilliputian fittings, its suggestive cosiness, its 
scent of violet powder and new flannel. “Do you think 
he will be happy here?” she asked, with a tender quasi- 
maternal quaver of delightful anticipation. 

“Who is— He?” 

Lady Cranberry hardly recognized her own voice, so 
transformed was it by the emotions she suppressed; but 
Mrs. Lovelace-Legge noticed nothing. “Who?” she 
echoed, and then laughed with moist, beaming eyes. 
“Who but the baby? Is it possible I haven’t told you? 
Or Lucy?” The second-best-beloved shook her head. 
“No. You see — the news of his coming was broken so 
suddenly that I was carried off my feet, and since then 
I’ve done nothing but engage nurses and buy baby 
things. This is Mrs. Porter” — she turned to the matronly 
person — “who will have entire charge of my pet — when 
he arrives; and this is Susan, her assistant. This” — 
she indicated the anomaly in blue baize and red braid — 
“is Miss Pilsener, from the Brompton Kindergarten. She 
is going to teach me how to open his little — little mind, 
and be everything to him from the very beginning!” 

“Won’t you open our little minds?” implored the sec- 
ond-best friend. “You know we are in a state of the 
darkest ignorance.” 

Mrs. Lovelace-Legge dismissed her attendants, and 
made her friends sit down on the nursery sofa, and sank 
into a low nursing-chair. She absently tried on an india- 
rubber apron as she spoke, and it was plain her heart 
was with the invisible infant. “Ask me questions,” she 


AN INDIAN BABY 


45 


said. “I don’t seem able to keep my thoughts concen- 
trated on anything but — baby!” 

^‘You must understand, Lotta,” said Lady Cranberry, 
^^that to find you in possession of” — she gulped — “a baby 
is a shock in itself to your most intimate friends. And 
in the name of your regard for Lucy, supposing myself 
to have no claim upon your confidence, I must ask you 
to explain how you come to be in possession of such a — 
such a thing? And to — to whom it belongs — and where 
it is coming from?” 

^‘I came into possession of baby through a dear 
friend,” explained Mrs. Lovelace-Legge. She added: 
“Perhaps you have heard of General Carabyne — Lieu- 
tenant-General Ranford Carabyne of the Ordnance De- 
partment, Calcutta?” 

Her friends replied simultaneously: “Never!” 

“He is the father of my child,” continued Mrs. Love- 
lace-Legge, “and, I am given to understand, a charming 
person!” 

Lady Cranberry’s lips moved soundlessly. She might 
have been breathing a prayer for patience. 

“The General,” went on Lotta, “married my old school- 
fellow, Julia Daubeny, in the spring of last year. He 
had already been married — in fact, had been twice a 
widower — when Julia met him at a Garrison Gymkhana. 
It was a case of love at first sight, and I gave Julia her 
trousseau as my wedding present. And now she is send- 
ing me home the General’s baby — the child of his last 
wife — as it cannot stand the climate, and she knows how 
I dote on little children.” 

“How old is this child?” queried Lady Cranberry. 

Mrs. Lovelace-Legge produced a thin crackling en- 
velope from her pocket, and unfolded Mrs. Carabyne’s 


46 


AN INDIAN BABY 


letter. ^ ‘Julia always writes without punctuation, and all 
her capitals are in the wrong places/’ she said, apolo- 
gizing for the hesitation with which she attacked the 
scrawled pages. “ forgot to mention,^ ” wrote Julia, 
“ ‘that the General has one son quite a darling and a 
favorite with everybody. He was christened Dampierre. 
There is French blood on the mother’s side, but every- 
body calls him “Dumps.” He has the sweetest nature 
and splendid teeth until about six months old ’ ” 

“Incoherent, isn’t she, rather?” hinted Lady Cran- 
berry. 

“ ‘Six months old when he was thrown out of his bam- 
boo-cart ’ — Anglo-Indian for perambulator, I suppose — 
‘thrown out of his bamboo-cart with a woman who had 
got hold of him at the time a most dreadful creature 
and sustained a severe concussion of the brain. You will 
gather by this that the poor dear is inclined to be more 
than a little child%’ ” 

“Is not the sense of that rather — involved?” 

Mrs. Lovelace-Legge held out the letter. 

“It is ‘child’ or else ‘wild,’ ” Lady Cranberry said, 
dropping her eyeglasses. 

“As if an infant of six months old could be called 
‘wild’!” giggled Mrs. Lovelace-Legge. She read on: 

“ ‘Now the doctors have positively ordered him home, 
and vje have not the least idea where to send him. In 
this dilemma I thought of you. The General shakes his 
head, but I have carried my point, and Dumps and his 
nurse sail by the “Ramjowrah” next Thursday, and when 
arrived in London will come straight to you. I have 
every faith in your goodness of heart, and know that poor 
dear Dumps could be placed in charge of no kinder 


AN INDIAN BABY 47 

friend. He is extremely affectionate — from pursuits 
which ruin many of the most promising young. [ ” 

“Humph!” ejaculated the puzzled Lady Cranberry. 

“Perhaps Julia means tearing his clothes and sucking 
the paint off his toys?” suggested the second-best dearest 
friend. 

Mrs. Lovelace-Legge read on: “ ^Men in India if you 
have read Rudyard Kipling I need not he more definite 
we shall look to your gentle influence to wean him.^ ” 

“One thing at least is clear,” remarked Lady Cran- 
berry. “The child is not yet weaned. As to your corre- 
spondent’s style, Lotta ” She said no more, but in 

her mind she harbored a most definite conviction that 
Julia Carabyne drank. “Eau de Cologne or red laven- 
der,” she thought, “or pure, unadulterated cognac. I pity 
the General from my heart!” 

A few more confused and comma-less paragraphs, and 
the letter wound up. 

“You think I did right?” Mrs. Lovelace-Legge glanced 
round at her preparations. “But, indeed, I had no choice. 
How could any woman with a heart — and a nursery ” 

“Both unoccupied?” said Lady Cranberry. 

“Close her doors against a little sick baby, coming all 
the way from India in a nurse’s arms? The bare idea 
strikes one as horrible! Besides, the poor darling maj^ 
arrive at any moment!” Mrs. Lovelace-Legge dried her 
pretty eyes with a fragment of gossamer cambric, and 
then — rat-tatter, tatter, tat! went the hall-door knocker. 

The three ladies started to their feet. Mrs. Lovelace- 
Legge rushed to the window. 

“Can it be?” 

“The baby — arrived?” . . . 

“It has! I see the top of a cab piled with luggage!” 


48 


AN INDIAN BABY 


cried Mrs. Lovelace-Legge, leaning eagerly from the 
nursery window. can make out the Harries Line label 
on the portmanteaux ” 

The second-best friend joined her at the casement. 

“One thing puzzles me/’ she said, peering downward. 
“Would a child of that age travel with gun-cases and a 
bicycle?” 

“They may belong to a passenger friend who promised 
to see the dear child delivered safely into my hands. Ah, 
here is Simmons!” 

Simmons it was, with a salver and a card. He wore a 
peculiar, rather wild expression, and his countenance was 
flushed and somewhat swollen; perhaps with the effort of 
climbing so many stairs. All three ladies hurried to 
meet him. 

“He— it— the ” 

^^They have arrived?” gasped little Mrs. Lovelace- 
Legge. 

Simmons bowed his head. His mistress could not 
speak. She took the card without looking at it, and 
turned away. 

“Show them up here!” commanded Lady Cranberry, 
sympathetically comprehending Lotta’s emotion. 

“And pay the cabman,” added the second-best friend. 

Left together, the three women broke out into antici- 
patory ejaculations: 

“The pet!” 

“The wumpsy!” 

“Will it be pretty?” 

“Oh, I hope so! But even if it is not,” cried little Mrs. 
Lovelace-Legge, clasping her hands, “I feel that I shall 
love it. Ought we” — her eyebrows crumpled inquiringly 


AN INDIAN BABY 49 

— “ought we to give it a warm bath at once? Where is 
Nurse?” 

Nurse and her understrapper appeared on the scene 
with the young lady from the Kindergarten. Six eager 
feminine heads were projected over the balusters of the 
top landing as masculine footsteps creaked upon the 
staircase, and a tall young man, dressed in a rough 
yachting suit of blue serge, raised his eyes — a handsome 
and ingenuous pair — and blushed under the salvo of 
optical artillery which greeted his appearance. Behind 
him followed a grizzled, middle-aged person, evidently a 
soldier-servant in mufti. 

“I — I presume . . . the young gentleman began, “I 
— I have the honor . . .” 

“I am Mrs. Lovelace-Legge,” cried the charming 
widow, craning forward, “and where — oh, where is the 
baby?” 

The young man turned pale. “The — ^the baby?” 

“Haven’t you brought it?” cried all the ladies. 

Tears welled up in Mrs. Lovelace-Legge’s lovely eyes. 

“Don’t tell me it is dead!” she gasped. “Oh, if that 
were true, how could I break the news to Julia and Gen- 
eral Carabyne?” 

“Madam,” stammered the young gentleman, “I am 
the only son of General Carabyne — Dampierre Cara- 
byne.” He blushed again. “People usually call me 
^Dumps,’ ” he said, and broke off as all six women 
screamed at once: 

“You! You THE baby!” 

And the nurses flung their clean cambric aprons over 
their heads, and rushed in titters from the scene, as poor 
little Mrs. Lovelace-Legge went into screaming hysterics 
in the arms of her second-dearest friend. 


50 


AN INDIAN BABY 


^‘It is all a ridi — a ridiculous misunderstanding!” 
gasped Lady Cranberry, an hour later, as the recovered 
hostess, her friends, and her newly-arrived guest sat to- 
gether in the drawing-room. ^‘Let him see Mrs. Cara- 

byne’s letter, Lotta. Perhaps he will be able to 

No! Better give it to me.” She mounted her gold eye- 
glasses upon her aquiline nose, and conned the Runic 
scroll a while. ^‘We were misled,” she explained to the 
young man, “principally by a reference to your nurse.” 

“Molloy is my nurse,” explained Mr. Dampierre Cara- 
byne. “He was one of the hospital orderlies at Calcutta, 
and looked after me when I was ill. And the Pater 
thought it best that he should valet me on the voyage, 
being a useful, experienced kind of man.” 

“As to this illness you speak of?” said Lady Cran- 
berry. 

“It happened six months ago. . . .” 

“Ago! I see a glimmer,” said Lady Cranberry. 

“When I was thrown out of a bamboo-cart in which I 
was driving a friend of mine — a very great friend,” 

Again the young man colored. 

^‘The woman who had got hold of him/^ murmured 
Lady Cranberry to herself. “And 'more than a little 
chiW means 'more than a little wildJ I should have 
seen that in his eye without a hint from Mrs. Carabyne.” 

Thus, bit by bit, the determined lady translated Julia’s 
letter, which ran as follows: 

“He was christened Dampierre (there is French blood 
on the mother’s side) ; but everybody calls him 'Dumps.’ 
He has the sweetest nature, and splendid health until six 
months ago, when he was thrown out of his bamboo-cart 
with a woman who had got hold of him at the time — a 
most dreadful creature — and sustained a severe concus- 


AN INDIAN BABY 


61 


sion of the brain. (You will gather by this that the poor 
dear is inclined to be more than a little wild.) Now the 
doctors have positively ordered him home, and we have 
not the least idea where to send him. In this dilemma 
I thought of you. The General shakes his head, but I 
have carried my point, and Dumps and his nurse sail by 
the Ramjowrah next Thursday, and when arrived in Lon- 
don will come straight to you. I have every faith in 
your goodness of heart, and know that poor dear Dumps 
could be placed in charge of no kinder friend. ... He 
is extremely affectionate. . . . From pursuits which ruin 
many of the most promising young men in India (if you 
have read Rudyard Kipling I need not be more definite) 
we look to your gentle influence to wean him.’^ 

Lady Cranberry took off her pince-nez and refolded 
the letter. As she did so she glanced toward the snug 
nook by the fireplace, where the pretty widow, entrenched 
behind the barricade of her afternoon tea-table, was 
making but a feeble show of resistance to the raking fire 
of Dumps’s handsome eyes. In such a mood such a 
woman as Lady Cranberry shares a corner of the mantle 
of the Prophets. It occurred to her that the infantile 
Paradise upstairs might not, if all went merrily as mar- 
riage bells, remain so very long untenanted. 

And, indeed, at the expiration of a twelvemonth from 

that date Mrs. Dampierre Carabyne 

Please see the left-hand top corner reserved in the 
morning papers for these delicate and personal intima- 
tions. 


YVOlSnSfE 


In Two Parts 
I 

A MILE or so north of the fishy little Breton harbor 
town of Paimpol, the hamlet of Pors Lanec is rep- 
resented by a scattered cluster of low-pitched, straggling 
cottages built of gray granite boulders splashed with yel- 
low lichen, their thatch of furze and reeds or broom- 
bush secured by lashings of rope, and heavy flagstones 
from the fierce assaults of the western gales. One in 
especial stands on an incline trending toward the beach, 
below the level of the Paimpol road. Its rear wall is 
formed by a low cliff against which it has been built, 
and which, rearing some twenty feet above the level of 
its shaggy brown roof, and throwing out a natural but- 
tress toward the sea, protects the poor dwelling from the 
icy northern winds. Three uneven steps, worn by the 
feet of generations of fisher-dwellers, lead to the door, 
whose inner latch is lifted by a length of rope-yarn, 
reeved through a hole. On each side of the door a win- 
dow has been hollowed out in the solid masonry of the 
wall, and roughly glazed; and beneath the rude slate 
ledge of each is a weather-beaten bench of drift-oak, 
blackened by age and usage. The door standing open 
gives a glimpse of the usual Breton interior, bunches of 
63 


YVONNE 


53 


dried herbs, nets, and baskets depending from the black- 
ened rafters, carved sleeping-bunks set about the walls, 
a few quaint pewter and copper flagons hanging on pegs 
driven into the chimney, and reflecting the leaping blaze 
of the pine and beechwood branches burning on the 
hearth. 

I do not know who lives in Mademoiselle Yvonne’s 
cottage now, but a year ago the western gale was churn- 
ing the gray sea into futile anger, and thrashing the 
stunted bushes into a more bending shape. The sky was 
somber as the sea, with eastward-hurrying drifts of slaty 
cirrus, which separated to reveal pale, sun-washed sky- 
spaces, and closed again, making the gloom seem deeper 
than before. 

It was the eighth of December, the Feast of the Im- 
maculate Conception — the day of the Pardon des Isl- 
andais — and the morning Angelus was ringing from the 
storm-beaten little chapel on the heights above, where 
nosegays of artificial flowers and strings of shells adorned 
the image of Our Lady of Good Help, and white-capped 
women, and rugged-faced, long-haired men knelt, rapt 
and serious, on the sandy stone pavement. Others were 
hurrying into Paimpol, where the streets were decorated 
with white sheets bordered with holly and ivy leaves in 
readiness for the procession. And a fine, icy rain was 
driving before the wind, and Yvonne’s tables and chairs 
stood out of doors while their owner beat and scrubbed 
them vigorously with a birch-broom dipped in soap-suds. 

^^She works upon the fete day, yes; but for all that she 
is no heretic, the poor Yvonne,” a passer-by explained to 
a companion — a stranger who showed surprise at the 
unusual spectacle. “All days are alike to her — and Our 
Lady understands.” 


54 


YVONNE 


The speaker, a brown-faced, vigorous woman of fifty, 
paused on the pathway, littered with brown trails of 
slippery seaweed, and cried: 

“Hey! So you’re not going with us to Paimpol, 
Mademoiselle Yvonne?” 

Mademoiselle Yvonne ceased flogging her table, and 
turned her face toward the questioner. It was a full, 
straight-featured, rather massive face, framed in the 
shell-fluted cap worn by unmarried women. The brows 
were broad, and from under the straight eyebrows looked 
a pair of eyes that were blue and clear and candid as 
those of the little boy who clung to the skirts of the 
woman who addressed her. As she drew herself up, rest- 
ing on her birch broom, it might be seen that she was 
tall and deep-chested and broad-bosomed, and that the 
massive plaits of hair coiled upon her temples were gray. 

“Going to Paimpol! Sure, it is impossible,” said 
Mademoiselle Yvonne. “There is so much to do getting 
the house ready.” A rich deep color flushed her cheeks, 
staining her temples and tinting her full throat to the 
edge of her bodice. “When one is to be married, Madame 
understands ” 

“So then! You have heard?” cried the neighbor with 
an elaborate pantomime of delight at the good news. 
“You have had a letter from Iceland at last?” 

The clear blue eyes looked troubled for a moment. 

“No. Not that,” said Mademoiselle Yvonne. “Not 
precisely a letter, but I have made out why the Marie au 
Secours delays so long. You see, they must have had a 
great catch at the cod-fisheries, and, being a man of 
brains, my Yann set out to make the most of his good 
luck. So the Marie au Secours will have merely touched 
at Paimpol, and then sailed down to the Gulf of Gascony, 


YVONNE 


55 


where fish fetch high prices, or even to the Sandy Isles.” 
One of her massive plaits, released by her vigorous 
movements from the confining pin, uncoiled and fell 
below her waist. “That is how it will have been, Madame 
Pilot!” exclaimed Yvonne, smiling and coiling up the 
beautiful hair. 

“Without doubt, that is how it will have been!” as- 
sented the other. 

She drove her stout elbow into the ribs' of the woman 
who had whispered to her. “Not so loud!” We people of 
the coast have sharper ears than you folks from inland.” 

“When did he sail?” 

“Twenty years ago, when she was eighteen, and all 
that gray hair gold.” 

“Pfui! There was a blast!” 

“We shall have to pick the wind^s bones all the way to 
Paimpol. So good-day. Mademoiselle. . . . Gaos, run 
and bid Mademoiselle Yvonne good-day.” 

Madame Pilot nudged the other woman again, as 
much as to say: “Watch her with the child!” 

Gaos obediently quitted his mother’s skirts, and 
Yvonne knelt down to kiss him. She whispered in the 
child’s ear coaxingly, and, as he hesitated, watched the 
innocent lips as though her fate in some inexplicable way 
hung upon their utterance. 

“She always tries to get him to say it, and he never 
will!” said Madame Pilot under her breath. 

“What?” mouthed the inland woman, with round, in- 
terested eyes. 

The child spoke at that moment loudly and clearly. 

“He will come back to-day!” 

“Lord above! if he hasn’t said it!” cried Madame 


56 


YVONNE 


Pilot, and crossed herself under her ample cloak as the 
boy came running to her. 

She caught his hand, and clattered on in her heavy 
wooden shoes, fighting her way resolutely against the 
wind, followed more slowly by the gaping inlander. 

‘‘You rogue! You little villain!’’ she cried to the child 
she dragged. “What made you say it?” 

“Be-be-cause — bub — bub — boo — because it’s true!” 
roared Gaos, through angry sobs. 

His mother, with a hasty invocation of her patron 
saint, dropped his hand, stopped where the beach-path- 
way merged in the Paimpol road, and looked back. 
Mademoiselle Yvonne was nowhere to be seen at first, 
but presently her figure mounted into view climbing the 
pathway to the chapel. 

“She has gone to burn a candle for her good news,” 
said Madame Pilot. “Now which have I for a son . . . 
a liar or a prophet? If one were to mistake and smack 
the prophet, it’s enough to bring a judgment down. 
. . .” She shook her head mournfully. “But it is to be 
prayed for, all the same, that that great rogue Yann may 
never come wheedling back. Drowned, did you suppose? 
Dead? Not a bit of it! . . . He’s living on the fat of 
the land in Ploubazou, where he landed his last cargo of 
fish nineteen years ago, married a tavern-keeper’s daugh- 
ter, and set up a sailor’s drinking-house himself; ‘The 
Chinese Cider Cellars,’ they call it. May Heaven punish 
such vagabonds!” panted Madame Pilot. “As for us in 
Pors Lanec, we’re peace-lovers and law-abiders, but there 
are stones and cudgels waiting for Monsieur Yann Treg- 
nier whenever he shows his nose here.” 

Madame Pilot stopped, as a broad-shouldered young 
man in a sailor’s cap and pilot-cloth jacket came tramp- 


YVONNE 


57 


ing toward her along the puddly Paimpol road, whistling 
a cheerful tune. He wore thick town-made brogues in- 
stead of wooden sabots, and saluted the women in the 
country fashion, though to him personally they were 
unknown, and passed by, leaving the mother of the pos- 
sible prophet staring; for he was known to her as the 
son of the Ploubazou tavern-keeper Yann Tregnier, 
christened Jean-Marie after his mother’s father. He was 
a well-looking, sturdy young fellow of eighteen, who 
had always hankered to join the Icelanders, as the cod- 
trawlers are called, and sail with the yearly fleet on the 
last day of February for the big, dangerous fisheries in 
the icy regions where the summers have no night. But 
Yann, his father, would not hear of it, and Jean-Marie 
had been apprenticed to a cooper in Paimpol. He had 
grumbled, but his fate appeared less hard now that he 
was in love with Gaud. Gaud lived with an aunt in the 
village of Pors Lanec, a place Jean-Marie knew as yet 
only by hearsay, since her parents lived in Paimpol, and 
she had met her lover while upon a visit to them. Pors 
Lanec lay by the beach a mile or two from Paimpol, 
Gaud had told him. The cottage was built against a 
great rock, the doorstep was the beach, and the sea the 
duck-pond before the door; he could not fail to recog- 
nize the place. Gaud had described it so clearly. 

Gaud was a little delicate creature, with hair of burn- 
ing gold hidden under her shell cap, and great violet- 
gray eyes, full of possible adoration for any likely young 
fellow who should come wooing to Pors Lanec, and the 
likely young fellow had come along in the person of 
Jean-Marie. And he had won her promise, and meant 
to marry her and settle down to the cooper’s trade in 
earnest. True, the girl was without a dower, and his 


58 


YVONNE 


father, with whom he had had a talk at Ploubazou last 
Sunday, had pulled a long lip at that piece of informa- 
tion, and he had said to the old man straight out: 
“Either I get Gaud or go to sea!’^ 

“Either I get Gaud — or go to seaP’ Jean-Marie re- 
peated now in the most deep and manly voice he had at 
command. For the cottage built against the cliff had 
come in sight, a dwelling so weather-worn and lichen- 
stained that it might have been an excrescence upon the 
side of the rock that sheltered it. “Either I get Gaud 
. . Jean-Marie squared his shoulders, and marched 
down upon the cottage where Gaud lived. As his firm 
footsteps crossed the plateau of sandy rock that lay be- 
fore the cottage door he heard a cry from within, and 
before he could lift a hand to the rope-yarn of the latch, 
the door was pulled violently back, thrown open, and a 
woman fell upon his breast with a sobbing shriek of joy. 

“Yann! Oh, my beloved, at last!” 

“Madame!” he stuttered. 

“Our Lady sent me word you would return to-day, and 
even as I was upon my way to thank her for such grace, 
I turned back thinking. ^If he should come and miss 
me!' ” 

The wind blew shrilly ; the sky grew black with storm. 
Jean-Marie's cheek was wet with rain or the woman’s 
tears. He was conscious of a dizziness. It was as though 
a web of some strange tissue were weaving in the cham- 
bers of his brain, and the pattern grew more and more 
familiar. The arms that clasped him were not those of 
a stranger; the heart that throbbed upon his own had 
rested there before. Even the cottage interior shown 
through the low doorway was familiar, and the oaken 


YVONNE 59 

benches to right and left, had he not carved his name 
on one of them, his and another’s? 

But even as these strange questions awakened in the 
mind of the young man, he was thrust violently back, 
and Yvonne was gazing, with still streaming eyes, at the 
face of a stranger, while, partly hidden by the tall figure 
of her aunt, appeared the little shrinking figure of 
Mademoiselle Gaud! 

^‘Who is it?” asked Yvonne dully, without removing 
her eyes from that unknown face of the man whose step 
was like Yann’s. 

— I believe — I think — ’tis Monsieur Jean-Marie,” 
panted Gaud. ^^Sweet St. Agnesi” she prayed inwardly 
to her patron saint, ^^make her not ask me his other 
name! If she does I am sure I shall lie and say I do 
not know; so, sweetest St. Agnes, preserve me from sin- 
ning!” Next moment she breathed freely, for Yvonne 
stepped aside, leaving the threshold free to the stranger. 

^^Ask of his business, little one!” she said, without 
looking at Gaud, ‘‘and let him know that he was mis- 
taken for one who has a right to be welcomed with open 
arms.” 

She had a black woollen cloak loosely thrown about 
her shoulders. She sat down upon the seat to the right 
of the door, her elbow on her knee, her chin upon her 
hand, the dark folds half concealing the noble outlines of 
her form, her eyes fixed upon the most distant turn in 
the Paimpol road. 

Jean-Marie was at liberty to proceed with his court- 
ing; Yvonne seemed to hear and see him no longer. Only 
as the lover grew gayer, and the clear laugh of Gaud 
sounded in unison with his, a quiver passed over the 
face of Yvonne. At twelve o’clock, when the dinner waa 


60 


YVONNE 


ready, Gaud came dutifully to tell her. She only shook 
her head, and the midday meal of salt fish, potatoes, and 
cider was shared by the lovers. 

When the dishes were washed, Jean-Marie proposed a 
stroll to the chapel on the cliff. Gaud, her pale cheeks 
tipped with a little crimson, like the leaves of a daisy, 
came to ask Yvonne’s permission. 

“My mother allowed him to visit us in Paimpol,” she 
said meekly, flushing deeper as she remembered that she 
had introduced him as Monsieur Jean-Marie, the cooper’s 
apprentice, and that her mother knew nothing of his re- 
lationship to the man who had used her Aunt Yvonne so 
wickedly. Through the crystal of Gaud’s nature ran a 
little streak of deceptiveness. Like all weak things, she 
could be cunning where her love or her interest was con- 
cerned, and what did it matter what Jean-Marie’s father 
had done? she argued. He was not Jean-Marie. So she 
and her sweetheart set out upon their walk, keeping a 
decorous distance of at least six feet between them, and 
swinging unoccupied hands that, when the path grew 
narrow, would meet and cling. And Yvonne saw two 
figures appear in the distance upon the Paimpol road, 
neither of which caused her any emotion. Monsieur 
Blandon, the Paimpol doctor, was hirpling out upon his 
old white mare, to visit some of his Pors Lanec patients; 
half an hour must elapse before he could dismount at 
Yvonne’s door, the mare was so old and the road so 
stony. She looked away, far out to sea, and watched a 
tossing white sail upon the inky horizon, and with the 
instinct of one bred by the sea knew that there would 
be weather yet more stormy, for the seagulls and kitti- 
wakes were hurrying inland. Then a heavy pair of 
wooden shoes clacked over the stones, and a vinous voice 


YVONNE 


61 


gave her ^^good-day.” It was one Piggou Moan, once a 
smart young fisherman and avowed rival of Yann, now 
the smuggler, the loafer, the drunkard of the hamlet. 

‘‘A drop o’ cider. Mademoiselle Yvonne, for old friend- 
ship’s sake and charity,” begged the toper. Yvonne 
scarcely looked at him, but made a slight motion of her 
hand toward the cottage door. With a slobbered bless- 
ing, red-nosed, ragged Piggou lurched in, lucky in the 
absence of Gaud, who would have found enough courage, 
at need, to have driven him forth with a broomstick. He 
reached a copper flagon from its peg, and went as if by 
instinct to the cider-cask that stood by the great, carved 
clothes-press. Minutes passed, and Piggou came out, 
brighter of eye if redder of nose than when he entered, 
wiping his dripping beard on his ragged sleeve. 

“It’s long since you and Piggou had a crack together. 
Mademoiselle Yvonne— years it is, and years! I’m not 
as fine a fellow as I used to be, though you’re a comely 
figure of a woman still. Excuse the freedom. Mademoi- 
selle! . . .” 

She looked at the drunkard with cold dislike, and 
moved toward the farther end of the bench as his 
liquored breath and flaming face came near her. 


II 

Piggou took the movement of Yvonne toward the end 
of the bench as an invitation, and sat down, as the 
doctor, hidden by a bend in the road, hirpled nearer on 
his old white mare. 

“I bear no malice,” the toper went on, “though, I take 
the saints to witness, what I am I owe to you, Mademoi- 


62 


YVONNE 


selle Yvonne — for being so handsome and so proud, for 
giving me the back of your hand, and the whole of your 
heart to Monsieur Yann Tregnier, who went away with 
it and never came back.’’ 

“He is coming back!” said Yvonne quietly, her eyes 
upon the most distant turn of the Paimpol road. 

Piggou chuckled drunkenly. 

“So you’ve said, Mademoiselle, for twenty years, since 
the Marie au Secours sailed for Iceland, Captain Yann 
aboard her.” 

She repeated: “He is coming back to-night!” 

Piggou leered drunkenly. 

“Come, my old gossip, my handsome Yvonne, don’t 
play the fool with Daddy Piggou. You’re not so cracked 
as you pretend to be, d’ye comprehend me? You know 
this waiting game’s a farce. He, your Yann, won’t come 
back; not because he’s dead, but because he’s alive. 
Alive and married to Louet Kergueven, that he had an 
eye on because of her dad’s money ; and they’ve as many 
children as peas in a pod — the eldest as fine a lad of 
eighteen as ever trod in his father’s footsteps all the 
ways to Pors Lanec. Didn’t I see him just now with that 
little white cat. Mademoiselle Gaud . . 

The rest was strangled in the drunkard’s throat as 
upon the white-washed wall behind him fell the stout 
shadow of Dr. Blandon, and the serviceable horn handle 
of an old-fashioned hunting-crop wielded by an arm still 
muscular hooked itself in Piggou’s cravat and plucked 
him from his seat. He sprawled, spluttering oaths. 

“Begone, rascal ! and if I ever hear of your trying this 
again. I’ll poison you next time I catch you in hospital,” 
foamed the doctor. 


YVONNE 6S 

“Why shouldn’t one tell the truth and shame the 
devil!” grunted Piggou. 

“Would you like me to tell Messieurs les Douaniers at 
the Paimpol Quay House the truth about those fine cod 
you were carrying when I met you last month on the 
road to Ploubazou? Ten whopping fellows, each with a 
box of prime Habanas in his gullet, and every box 
wrapped round in Spanish lace? ... Be off with you!” 
And, assisted by some additional impetus from the toe 
of the doctor’s riding-boot, Piggou scrambled to his feet 
and clattered away. 

Yvonne had not stirred while this little scene was 
in action. Her elbow on her knee, her chin upon her 
hand, she sat and watched that distant bend in the Paim- 
pol road as she had watched it, to quote Madame Pilot, 
“when all that hair was gold.” Now she turned toward 
the doctor, who was her good friend. 

“That is done with,” Monsieur Blandon pointed to the 
ragged figure of the receding Piggou. “He knows what 
he will get if he troubles you with his rubbish again. 
And how is the heart. Mademoiselle? Those drops I left 
last time. . . . You take them?” 

“I take them; but,” said Yvonne, her quiet eyes upon 
the road, “they make my heart beat.” 

“That’s what they are for. Mademoiselle.” 

“They make my heart beat,” she said, “until night 
and day, day and night, the beating seems like the sound 
of footsteps coming to me along the road. Nearer and 
nearer — louder and louder. Then they grow hesitating, 
irregular, and stop. Stop, and then go back. And as 
they become fainter in the distance, I seem to grow more 
quiet and more cold.” 

Said the doctor, possessing himself of Yvonne’s wrist 


64 


YVONNE 


and watching her as he counted the pulse-beats as in- 
tently as she watched the road: 

^‘They are footsteps of one you know, Mademoiselle?’' 

She turned on him those startlingly blue and brilliant 
eyes. 

^‘Surely . . . They are his!" 

The doctor had often met a tall man muffled in a great 
country cape of frieze walking on the Paimpol road. 
They had never exchanged words, scarcely even looks, 
but the brass buttons in the back of Blandon’s old riding- 
coat were eyes, and he had observed how the walker 
turned back before reaching that last bend from which 
the cottage could be plainly seen. 

“His evil conscience keeps him restless — or he loves 
her still, though he bartered her love for a tavern and a 
scolding wife," the Doctor thought, noting, without seem- 
ing to do so, the changes time had made in the boldy 
handsome face and giant frame of Captain Yann Treg- 
nier, late of the Marie au Secours, now landlord of the 
Chinese Cider Cellars at Ploubazou. “But to set foot in 
Pors Lanec he will not dare. The men and women would 
rise up and stone him out of the village." 

And Monsieur Blandon bade Yvonne adieu, and turned 
up his collar and got upon his shambling old white horse 
to ride back to Paimpol. 

Yvonne sat where he had left her. The early winter 
evening was closing in. The wind had fallen, and the sea 
had gone down ; only it breathed from time to time like a 
sleeping monster of the diluvian age. Through the black 
curtains of the sky some pale stars looked forth, and 
white spectral clouds, in shapes appalling to the sense, 
pursued a flying moon. The lovers had not returned, the 
hearth-flre was dying out. Guessing at this, Yvonne 


YVONNE 


65 


bestirred herself to go within and feed it with fresh 
branches. The fading flame wakened again; she turned 
toward the door, and as she did so the step for which 
she had waited twenty years crashed over the gravel, 
sounded on the stone plateau before the cottage, and the 
flgure of a man — massive, almost a giant in height and 
breadth, his great proportions increased in bulk by a 
heavy cape of the country frieze — fllled up the doorway. 

It had come — the moment for which she had waited 
through the years. She did not scream and fall upon his 
neck; he made no movement toward her. Only he pulled 
his rough cap from his head with a deference that had 
awe in it, and fear, and his heavy black curls, grizzled 
now, fell over the brow that was lined and rugged, and 
the eyes that were no longer bright with youth and hope, 
but bleared with a dull, sordid life and much strong 
drink, and the hopeless outlook on a life that was bare 
of all joy. 

“Yann! My love . . . Yann! You have come back 
to me at last!’^ 

The words were not uttered in a cry, but almost whis- 
pered. As the light of love and joy kindled in her eyes 
she became young once more. Her arms swept out to 
clasp him and found him not, for he had sunk down upon 
his knees; but he clutched her apron and drew her to 
him, and broke into hoarse, uncouth weeping, his head 
hidden against her, his arms clasping her, her love and 
pity overshadowing him like an angel’s wings. 

^‘He weeps for joy!” she thought, whereas he wept for 
shame; but had she known the truth she would still have 
comforted him. After a while he grew calmer, and they 
went out together into a night suddenly become beautiful 
and glorious with stars — or it seemed so to Yvonne — and 


66 


YVONNE 


sat together on the bench beneath the window, cheek to 
cheek and arms entwined, and she poured out her brim- 
ming heart to him. How she had waited, she told. 
Patiently, hoping always, loving him always, never de- 
spairing, sure of his return. Had he been dead she 
would have known it. But in the absence of the warn- 
ing that never fails to come — the midnight wail beneath 
the window, the midnight knock upon the door or 
window-pane, given by no hand of mortal flesh — she had 
remained quite certain that he was alive. Had she not 
been right in guessing that the Marie au Secours had 
only touched at Paimpol and sailed down into the Gulf 
of Gascony, or even to Bayonne, to sell her cargo of salt 
cod? 

^‘Ay. ’Twas as you thought, Yvonne!” he answered. 

^^And you sold well?” 

^‘Ay!” he answered again. Truly, he had sold well, 
more than his flsh. Honor and love, both had gone into 
the scales against the dowry of the tavern-keeper’s scold- 
ing wife, a houseful of children — a sordid existence 
flavored with the fumes of stale drink and stale tobacco, 
a few bags of dirty five-franc pieces stowed away in a 
safe hiding-place, for the Breton is a hoarder by instinct, 
and distrusts the Bank of France: for these rags and 
fardels he had bartered Yvonne. He was dully conscious 
of such thoughts as these even as he was conscious of 
the joy of being near her. Coarse-fibered as he was, this, 
the one pure passion of his life, revived in all its old 
strength at the clasp of Yvonne’s hands and the meeting 
of their eyes. He began to believe that the desire to 
be near her once more again had brought him to Pors 
Lanec. Perhaps he was right, but the motive, he had 
admitted to himself, was mean and sordid. He wished 


YVONNE 61 

to bring about a rupture between Jean-Marie and Gaud. 
The girl was penniless; Jean-Marie a love-sick young 
fool. Besides, his wife would never consent to a union 
of their families; she had never ceased to be jealous of 
the sweetheart to whom Yann had played false. “You 
threw her over for my money, rogue that you are!’’ she 
would say to him, when red wine dashed with cider had 
made her quarrelsome. 

The night drew on. Drifting clouds no longer ob- 
scured the faces of the stars ; the December night might, 
for mildness, have been May, or so it seemed to Yann 
and to Yvonne. There was a fragrance in the air like 
hawthorn, and the shrill chirping of a cricket rose from 
the glowing hearth in the darkened room behind them. 

The lovers found few words to utter, but their silence 
was eloquent; the air they breathed in unison seemed the 
revivifying essence of joyous life. Yann yielded to the 
exquisite intoxication. In the glamour of that meeting he 
was young again, clean of heart and soul, looking for- 
ward to their wedding day with the eagerness of a true 
lover. He found himself replying in low, eager tones to 
Yvonne’s questions. . . . No, he would not sail for Ice- 
land in February as a bachelor; they must get married 
before the Blessing of the Boats. The official papers 
must be filled and signed, the banns put up . . . there 
would be a honeymoon for Yann and Yvonne before the 
Marie au Secours (poor old vessel, long ago cast up in 
driftwood on the shores of Iceland) should set sail. 

“Ay, indeed, my love, we have waited long enough!” 
he said. 

Yvonne laughed, a low melodious laugh of happiness, 
and owned that the wedding dress, handsomely made and 
trimmed with broad bands of velvet, just as he liked best 


68 


YVONNE 


— had been ready a long time. She took him back to her 
pure heart, without a word, without a question. . . . 
He had been long in coming, but he had come at last, 
and she was utterly content. He drew her into his strong 
embrace, and she laid her head on his great shoulder with 
the sigh of a child that is weary with too much bliss. His 
arm encircled her; both her hands, clasped together, 
rested in his large palm. Sleep came to her, and peace; 
even the breath that at first had fluttered fitfully be- 
neath his cheek could be felt no more. And the night 
wore on apace, and the glamour fell from him, little by 
little, and he was again the landlord of the Chinese 
Cider Cellars, with a scolding wife, and an obstinate 
whelp of a son, mad to marry a penniless little draggle- 
tail. Ay, he could speak now, and he would! He un- 
wound his arm from the waist of Yvonne and withdrew 
the support of his rough palm from her clasped hands, 
and as he did so a long faint sigh escaped her and her 
head fell back against the whitewashed wall. Ay, he 
could speak, and did! 

‘‘Lord knows what nonsense we have been talking, 
you and me. . . . Something bewitched me. . . . The 
fine night or the sight of the old place. In truth, Yvonne, 
you know as well as I do that I’m a married man; that 
cat must ha’ got out of the bag long ago. And hearing 
that you never would believe I’d played fast and loose 
with ye made me a bit shamefaced, hence we never have 
clapped eyes on one another until now, Yvonne. Though 
my young cub has been hanging about here after the girl 
Gaud — ^threatening me with going to sea if she’s denied 
him — and seeing as she hasn’t a sou of dowry, I look to 
you to stop that foolery. For my good woman at home. 


YVONNE 69 

. . . I’ll own her a bit of a Tartar, and, to tell ye the 
truth, Yvonne ” 

^Tather!” said Jean-Marie, stepping forward out of 
the darkness, the dimly-seen, shrinking figure of Gaud 
behind him. 

Yann rose up, threatening and formidable, his clenched 
fist ready to strike. Gaud cried out in fear; but Yvonne, 
the silvery moonlight filling the hollows of her quiet eyes 
and resting in the curves of her white cheeks, and kissing 
her closed, patient lips into the semblance of a smile, 
never stirred. The night wind played with a little lock 
of hair escaping from the edge of her shell-fluted cap, and 
her bosom neither rose nor fell. 

^Tretty goings on. . . . Look here, you cub!” Yann 
was beginning, but his son’s eyes looked past his at the 
placid face of the sleeper on the bench, and the fear and 
awe in them were not inspired by his father. Yann 
looked round then, and a hoarse cry broke from him. 

^^Speak to her,” whispered Jean-Marie, and Gaud 
tremblingly touched Yvonne’s clasped hands. They were 
cold as the smiling lips and the sealed eyes on which 
rested the white peace that is the kiss of Death. 

The cricket chirped within the cottage, and the deep 
slumbrous breathing of the sea came from beyond a cur- 
tain of chill white mist. Yvonne’s long time of waiting 
had ended at last. 


THE DELUSION OF MRS. DONOHOE 


In Two Parts 
I 

I T was in the spring of 19 — that the Dapple Grays 
returned from South Africa, covered with wounds, 
glory, boils, and khaki, this last presenting many solu- 
tions of continuity. One finds the arrival of H. M. 
troopship Paradise at Porthampton Dockyard referred 
to in the newspapers bearing the date of that occurrence 
as an event calculated to awaken emotions of gratitude 
and enthusiasm in the bosom of every Briton. An illu- 
minated address was presented to the Chief by the 
Mayor and Corporation of the borough, and the Dapple 
Grays were subsequently entertained, the Colonel and 
officers to a banquet, and the rank and file to a blow- 
out. 

“You return to us. Captain,’’ the Mayor is reported to 
have said in a complimentary rider addressed to the 
commanding officer of the Paradise, “with a freight of 
heroes.” 

“A freight of devils, sir!” the Captain remarked in 
loud-toned confidence to the neighbor on his left. “If 
the Admiralty had any sense of humor — or any sense of 
fitness, by George! — the name of the ship would have 
been changed before we sailed. But the Paradise has 
70 


,THE DELUSION OF MRS. DONOHOE 71 


seemed almost like one, sir, since we disembarked ^em, 
and that’s a fact. What’s the next toast on the list, did 
you ask? ‘The united healths of the two regimental 
V. C.’s, Captain the Hon. Gerald Garthside and Private 
Dancey Juxon.’ ” 

“What were the special acts of gallantry, do you — ah! 
— happen to — ah! — remember?” asked the Captain’s left- 
hand neighbor (a pompous local magnate), “for which 
the Cross has been — ah! — conferred?” 

“Usual thing. Garthside — that’s Garthside, on the 
Mayor’s left hand, trying to look modest, and succeedin’ 
uncommon badly — Garthside rode from Mealiekloof to 
Blitzfontein with despatches for the Brigadier, peppered 
by Cronje’s outposts from overlooking ground nearly the 
whole distance. Juxon was cut off while out on scout 
with a detachment, and got away from twenty Boers with 
his officer on the crupper. Young Bogle, next-of-kin to 
Lord Baverstone, died before Juxon got back to the regi- 
ment, chipped in too many places for recovery! Better 
off if he’d been left behind, do you say? Probably — 
probably. But Juxon has the V. C., and they’re bringin’ 
him in to hear his health proposed. . . . Fine-lookin’ 
young Tommy, isn’t he? Looks quiet and well-behaved, 
you think? Ah, you ought to have been with us on the 
voyage from the Cape. The evil genius of the lower 
troop-deck, and that’s facts. Ringleader in every act 
of insubordination, up to all sorts of devilment, a black 
sheep, sir, a black — hip, hip, hurray! For he’s a 
jolly ” 

“And so,” said the Colonel of the Dapple Grays to his 
Senior Major, a few weeks later, when the regiment had 
shaken down in its old barracks at Studminster ; when its 
feminine complement had rejoined it; when wives once 


72 THE DELUSION OF MRS. DONOHOE 


more “upon the strength’’ were washing the tattered 
remains of shirts which had seen more service than soap- 
suds, and husbands were employing eloquence in the 
effort to convince civilian visitors to the canteen that, 
despite the solemn warning recently issued from the most 
authoritative quarters, to treat the newly-convalescent 
enteric patient to beer or ardent spirits is to accelerate 

and not to retard his return to perfect health “And 

so it’s a settled thing, the engagement between your little 
girl and Garthside? Affair not jumped up in a hurry? 
Began a year before the regiment was ordered to the 
Front? Of course. My wife saw the attachment grow- 
ing between ’em, and helped it on, she tells me. Every 
married woman’s a match-maker, you know — don’t you 
know — whether she’s put her own private pot on a bit 
of good blood, with temper and stayin’ power and so 
forth, or a dee-d confounded showy screw. And your 
little girl, not having a level-headed mother of her own 
alive to look after her ! . . . Deucedly raw weather, you 
know, don’t you know!” 

Sir Alured broke off, anticipating rather than seeing 
the gray change in Major Rufford’s face, and remem- 
bering that the handsome wife, who had died when 
Emmie was a hoyden of thirteen, had signalized the close 
of her career upon earth as Major Rufford’s wife and 
the mother of his children by an act of desperate folly. 
But the Senior Major’s wounds had been cicatrized hy 
the great healer Time, and he looked back quietly enough 
as the Colonel cleared his throat with unnecessary vio- 
lence, and twisted the great moustache that had been 
iron-gray and was now snow-white. 

“Lady Gassiloe has been very kind, and Emmie doesn’t 
forget how much she owes her. And there’s the right 


THE DELUSION OF MRS. DONOHOE 73 


stuff in Garthside ; I can trust him to make my little girl 
a good husband. It’s odd, when one comes to think of 
it, that our other Victoria Cross man is going to be mar- 
ried, and to Emmie’s foster-sister, Peggy Donohoe.” 

^‘The deuce!” said Sir Alured. ^^Is that dee-d young 
scoundrel, Juxon, going to settle down? Seems too good 
to be true. Why, the old Paradise was hell when Juxon 
wasn’t in the cells. Nearest approach to a rhyme I ever 
made in my life, by George 1 But Juxon’s character apart 
it’s not a bad match. The young blackguard has plenty 
of good looks, and Peggy’s as pretty a girl as you may 
see, look high or low. And she thinks Juxon a 'proo 
shevally with his V. C.; and so do poor Bogle’s people, 
and so do the public, by Jove! You should have heard 
him when . he reported himself. . . . ^What did you 
mean, you dee-d idiot, ^ I asked him, ‘hy picking up a 
man who^d had the top of his head shot clean off, and 
couldn^t live five minutes? D^ye call that philanthropy? 
In my opinion ifs dee-d foolery T ^Beggin’ your pardon. 
Colonel, sir!’ says Juxon, T calls it precaution. When I 
’oisted Mr. Bogle up be’ind me, I see’d ’e’d ’ad ’is gruel, 
an’ the last breath went out of ’im before old ’And- 
some-Is — that’s wot I calls that ’ere spavined gray o’ 
mine — ’ad got into ’is stride. But the bullets was ’um- 
min’ round me like ’omets, an’ pore Mr. Bogle, lyin’ as 
’e wos acrost my ’ams, drawed fire an’ furnished cover.’ 
Furnished cover! The cool young beggar fortifies his 
rear with the next in succession to one of the oldest 
peerages in the United Kingdom, gets mentioned in de- 
spatches, and receives his V. C.! Too dee-d funny, you 
know, don’t you know!” 

And Sir Alured mixed a brandy and soda, and chose 
an enormous cigar from a case resembling a young Glad- 


74 THE DELUSION OF MRS. DONOHOE 


stone bag. The conversation took place in a curious 
ground-glass hutch, sacred to the inner mysteries of Offi- 
cial business, and labeled ‘Trivate.’^ And as the second 
in command charged and kindled a meerschaum of in- 
credible age and foulness, there came a knock at the 
door. 

‘‘C’min!” barked the Chief over the rim of the tilted 
tumbler, and the regimental Doctor looked round the 
door. “Oh! it’s you. Assassin!” he said, as he wiped the 
froth off the great white moustache. “How many ex- 
enterics have you kicked out of the convalescent ward 
this morning?” 

“Three,” said the Assassin — “Denver, Moriarty, and 
Jarman. Garthside’s lambs all.” 

“And dee-d malingerers, in my opinion!” said Sir Al- 
ured. 

“I’m with you there, sir,” responded the Assassin with 
a twinkle. Then he relapsed into professional gravity, 
and said as he accepted a cigar and a peg, “There are one 
or two bad cases of relapse, I’m sorry to say — as the re- 
sult of incautious indulgence in alcoholic beverages.” 

“Of course, of course!” growled Sir Alured. “When a 
man with a granulated stomach uses the organ as a re- 
ceptacle for whisky, beer, and gin, contributed in unlim- 
ited quantities by admirin’ friends, he oughtn’t to be sur- 
prised when he finds himself drivin’ to the cemetery on 
a gun carriage to the tune of the Dead March in Saul, 
with his boots following as chief mourners. Stands to 
reason!” 

“I don’t anticipate any serious results, except in the 
case of Sergeant Donohoe,” the Assassin said, with a 
worried look in his usually cheerful countenance. 

“Donohoe down again. Poor devil! I’m sorry to hear 


THE DELUSION OF MRS. DONOHOE 75 


it!” The Chief tugged at the ends of the great white 
moustache and looked grave. 

“Only yesterday,” said the Senior Major, “I thought 
him looking about as fit as a man needs to be. He told 
me about Juxon^s engagement to his daughter, and went 
off as pleased as Punch ” 

“To drink their healths,” interpolated the Assassin. 

“Hah! That’s about it,” grumbled the Chief. “Well, 
I shall go round and look Donohoe up presently. Can’t 
afford to lose my Senior Color-Sergeant, you know, don’t 
you know!” Sir Alured frowned savagely, and cleared 
his throat with ominous vigor. 

“You’ll find him pretty low down,” said the Assassin, 
“and I fancy Father Haggarty will be on duty. They’d 
sent for him before I came away.” 

“Is it as bad as that?” said the Senior Major, and 
there was a moment’s silence, broken by a clinking step 
on the stone flags outside and a respectful knock on the 
glass door. 

“A ’ospital horderly, sir,” said the passage orderly to 
Major Rufford, “with Color-Sergeant Donohoe’s respect- 
ful duty, and would you mind the trouble of steppin’ 
over and bearin’ somethin’, sir, wot ’e ’as to say? It’s 
Ward C., and a case of perforation — and, beggin’ your 
pardon, sir, there ain’t much time to lose.” 

“Of course I’ll come! Say, at once!” Major Rufford 
lumbered up out of his chair, emptied the office kitten 
out of his undress cap, took his cane, which the office 
puppy had been chewing, and went. 

“Donohoe’s wife was Rufford’s girl’s foster-mother, you 
know, don’t you know!” said Sir Alured. “There’s not 
more than a month’s difference between Peggy Donohoe 
and Emmie Rufford in age. When they were babies I’ve 


76 THE DELUSION OF MRS. DONOHOE 


seen ’em sleepin’ in the same cradle; and dee me if I 
knew which of ’em was which, though I suppose their 
mothers did. Not that Rufford’s poor wife was over and 
above devoted to her babies. Odd now if the little beg- 
gars had got mixed up somehow, and Donohoe had sent 
for Rufford with the object of easin’ his conscience be- 
fore he gave up the number of his mess.” 

that’s all Gilbert and Sullivan!” said the Assas- 
sin, getting up. “Such things don’t happen in real life, 
Colonel, and I’m going back to the hospital.” 

“You think not? Differ with you there. Walk over 
with you, if you’ve no objection.” And the Chief and 
the Assassin followed in the wake of Major Rufford, who 
had only a moment before received point-blank and at 
short range from Sergeant Donohoe’s puffy blue lips — 
parted for easier passage of the slow, painful breaths 
that were taken with such agony — the second over- 
whelming surprise of his life. 

For Sir Alured’s stray shot had registered a bull’s-eye. 
Donohoe, conscious that the grim messenger who had 
beckoned and passed by so many times — ^under the 
heights of Jagai, in the clammy Burmese hill jungles, 
amid the muddy swamps of West Africa, or the karroo 
scrub or grass veldt of the South — meant business on 
this occasion — had given up the secret less hidden than 
forgotten for many years. Many years since, according 
to her own confession, faltered out to the Sergeant upon 
her dying bed, the pretty young wife of Private Dono- 
hoe, urged by the promptings of motherly love, or in- 
cited, as Father Haggarty would have said, by the temp- 
tation of the Devil, arrayed her own nursling in the long- 
tailed cambric robe with insertion of Valenciennes, 
properly appertaining to the foster-babe; enduing the 


THE DELUSION OF MRS. DONOHOE 77 


said foster-babe, namely Emmeline, infant daughter of 
Captain and Mrs. Rufford, not only with the abbreviated 
cotton frock which was the birthright of a Donohoe, but 
with all the privileges appertaining to a daughter of the 
rank and file; including a share in the Christmas tree 
and bran-pie diversions annually given under the patron- 
age of the Colonel’s wife and other ladies of the Regi- 
ment — including her own mother. 

“Don’t say it, Donohoe,” pleaded the bewildered Ma- 
jor, sitting on the foot of Donohoe’s cot-bed, holding the 
rigid, hand, and shaken by the throes that were rending 
the Sergeant’s soul from the Sergeant’s body. “It’s an 
idea you’ve got into your head — nothing more! She — 
your wife — never changed the babies. . . . For God’s 
sake, man, say you know she didn’t!” 

But Father Haggarty’s kindly, pitying look had in it 
knowledge, religiously kept sacred, now freed by volun- 
tary confession from the sacramental seal. He held the 
Crucifix to Donohoe’s livid lips, and they moved, and a 
living voice came forth as from a sepulchre: 

“She did ut. Sure enough she did ut; but for the right 
rayson why, sorr, I’m yet asthray. For wan thing — 
herself was a poor hard-workin’ woman — an’ the choild 
would be wan if ut lived. ’Twas ten years she carried 
the saycret — a mortial weight for a wake crayture, an’ a 
Prodesdan’ at that, wid no relief av clargy — and it wore 
her to the grave. On her dyin’ bed she confessed ut to 
me. I had my thoughts av makin’ a clane breast, and 
then — wurra! ’twas the divil at my elbow biddin’ me 
whisht or I’d lose my Peggy that was the pride av me 
eyes an’ the joy av me harrut. An’ I held off from Fa- 
ther Haggarty, till I could hould no longer. That was 
six Aysthers back; and — Tell tho truth,’ says his Rev^r- 


78 THE DELUSION OF MRS. DONOHOE 

ence, ^or you’ll get no more of an absolution from me, 
me fine man, than Micky -would-you-taste-it?’ Ah’ at 
that I stiffened me upper lips an’ riz from me marra 
bones an’ wint me way. But the Hand is on me now, 
an’ I’ve made my paice wid Thim above; an’ I’d be glad 
you’d send for my Peggy to be afther biddin’ her ould 
dada good-bye — more by token she’s your Miss Emme- 
line by rights, and not my purty Peggy at all, at alll” 


II 

Miss Margaret Donohoe — popularly known in the 
regiment as ^Teggy,” and, as it will be remembered, be- 
trothed to Private Dancey Juxon, V. C. — Miss Mar- 
garet Donohoe was not summoned to the bedside of her 
hitherto-reputed father in time to hear from his own 
lips the secret of her birth. She was trimming an old 
hat with new crape for mourning exigencies, the day 
after the Sergeant had been consigned with the usual 
military honors to the Catholic division of the ceme- 
tery, when heavy footsteps sounded in the flagged pas- 
sage of the Married Quarters, and the Colonel and the 
Senior Major, both visibly disturbed, walked into Dono- 
hoe’s clean sanded kitchen, and, in as few words as pos- 
sible, broke the news. 

‘^It’s a terrible shock to you, my poor girl — as it has 
been to me!” said the Major, very white about the gills. 
“And to — to another I needn’t name!” He was thinking 
of his Emmie, and how piteously she had sobbed last 
night and hung about his neck, with her pretty hair all 
coming down over his mess waistcoat, as she begged him 
not to send her away from him, because it wasn’t her 


THE DELUSION OF MRS. DONOHOE 79 


fault that she had turned out to be Donohoe^s daughter 
and not his own; and how at that moment she was 
breaking the news to Garthside — that Junior Captain 
and Victoria Cross hero to whom, it will be remembered, 
she was engaged. Poor Emmie, poor darling Emmie! — 
or Peggy, as she ought now to be called! Major Ruf- 
ford felt that he never would be able to do it. ‘‘But — 
I’ll try and do my duty to you as your father should, 
and — and I must look to you to — to do as much by me!’^ 
he concluded lamely. 

“Oh, Major!” cried Peggy — Peggy with the hard, 
bright, black eyes, the red lips, the tip-tilted nose, the 
Milesian upper lip, and the coarse but plenteous mane of 
dark brown hair liberally “banged” in front and ar- 
ranged behind in massive rope coils, secured by hairpins 
of imitation tortoiseshell as long as the farrier’s pincers. 
“Oh, Major! can you ax it? Sure I’ll thrate you as da- 
cent as ever I did him that’s gone, an’ the Colonel hears 
me say it! . . .” 

She checked the inclination to weep for one who was, 
all said and done, no relation, and put her crackling six- 
penny-three-farthings black-bordered handkerchief back 
in her pocket with an air of resolution. A flood of new 
ideas inundated her brain. All that she had ever 
dreamed of in the way of the unattainable lay hence- 
forth within her reach, and everything that had hitherto 
appeared most desirable and possible was from this be- 
wildering hour rendered impossible. Her eyes fell on 
Private Dancey Juxon, V. C., who had been sitting on 
the kitchen table when the tall shadow of Sir Alured 
fell upon the sanded floor, and who had remained, from 
that moment until this, petrified in an attitude of mili- 
tary respect, against the whitewashed wall; and she 


80 THE DELUSION OF MRS. DONOHOE 


realized that Dancey — Dancey, the Adonis of the rank 
and file* the hero once desired above all others, wrested 
at the expense of the most costly and variegated hats 
and the most dazzling toilettes from the clutches of how 
many other women! — Dancey must now be numbered 
among the impossibles. If a cold dash of regret mingled 
with the inward exultation of Miss Peggy, it was ex- 
cusable. 

“Sure, the dear knows! ’Tis like a‘ tale out av the 
Pinny Romancir” she said, “an’ troth it’s no wondher 
av my breath was tuk away wid the surprise. To think 
of that bould craythur, Donohoe’s wife ! ” 

“Do you mean your mother, my girl?” began the Colo- 
nel, but Peggy gave Sir Alured a look that put him in 
his place. 

“I mane the woman that changed me in me cradle, 
bad cess to her for a thrickster!” said Peggy, “an’ put 
her own sojer’s brat in the place av me — me that be- 
longed to the Quality by rights. Not that I’m not pityin’ 
Miss Emmeline — now that she’s Peggy Donohoe, a poor 
craythur sprung from nothin’.” The Major turned a 
groan into a cough, and the Colonel hauled at the ends of 
his huge white moustache, but the tide of Peggy’s brogue 
was not to be stemmed. “It’ll be a change for her, it 
will so, afther livin’ on the fat av the land — an orphan’s 
pinsion to find her in stirabout, an’ never a chick nor a 
child in the woide wurruld but her ould Aunt Biddy Kin- 
sella!” 

“Who — haw! — is Biddy Kinsella?” broke in the Colo- 
nel. 

“Av’ she’s alive — an’ a bag av dhry bones she must be 
av she is,” says Peggy — “it’s at Carricknaclee, in Aher, 
you may find her. She used to live wid her niece — 


THE DELUSION OF MRS. DONOHOE 81 


mailin' Mrs. Donohoe — an' she wint back to Ireland 
whin me mother died — manin' Mrs. Donohoe agin — a 
matter av eight years ago. An' 'tis natural Donohoe's 
daughter would call her to mind at a time like this. 
Maybe the young woman would go to live wid her," 
continued Miss Peggy calmly. “An' that brings to me 
own mind, Major — I mane Papa — whin do ye want me 
to come home?" 

“Home! Oh, Lord!" said the poor Major, before he 
could stop himself. 

“Dee-d cool!" growled Sir Alured, under the huge 
moustache, squeezing the Major's arm with his great, 
gaunt, brown hand. “But she's got the right — got the 
right, Rufford, you know, don't you know. Ha — hum!" 

“You shall hear from me soon — very soon, Peggy," 
said the Major brokenly. “Good-bye for now, my girl." 
He took her coarse red hand, so unlike his Emmie's, and 
kissed her equally red cheek; and as he did so the petri- 
fied Juxon recovered the temporarily suspended powers 
of speech and motion, stepped forward, and saluted. 

“Beg pardon, gentlemen," he began, “and pre-'aps I 
oughtn't to take the freedom; but 'avin' over'eard . . ." 

“Saw you, Juxon! Knew you were there! Thought 
you had a right to hear, you know, don't you know!" 
said Sir Alured. 

But a shrill feminine note of indignation pierced the 
Colonel's bass, as Miss Peggy cried, “Right! I'd be glad 
you'd tell me what right you have, Misther Dancey 
Juxon, to be afther pokin' the nose av you into business 
that doesn't consarn you, let alone the privit affairs av 
an officer's daughther. Away wid you, an' larn your 
place! your room's more welcome than your company; 
an’ if it's a wife you're lookin' afther, maybe when wan 


THE DELUSION OF MRS. DONOHOE 


av thim that’s av your own station stands up before the 
priest wid you, I’ll be making you a little prisint toward 
the housekeepin’, av the young woman’s dacent an’ re- 
spictable!” 

And the bewildered Juxon found himself outside the 
black-painted door — marked III. in large white nu- 
merals — in the character of a lover dismissed. 

^‘Well, I’m blowed!” he said, and said no more, but 
clinked away in search of the Lethean streams of the 
canteen. 

“Rufford,” said Sir Alured solemnly, as the Chief and 
the second in command exchanged the atmosphere of 
coals and potato peels prevailing in the Married Quar- 
ters for the open air of the barrack square, “I’m con- 
foundedly afraid she’s a Tartar! Sharp as a needle, sir, 
and knowing as a pet fox, if you ask me!” 

And the Major said in reply, “These things are sup- 
posed to be hereditary. I wonder where she gets it 
from!” Then he broke out, “I can’t believe it. Colonel! 
I couldn’t, if fifty dying men had taken an oath to it. 
That my poor Clara’s girl ! It’s impossible! If an angel 
were to come down from Headquarters Above, with de- 
spatches confirming the report, I couldn’t credit it!” 

“And dee-d if I should blame you,” the Chief re- 
sponded. “Breed’s bound to show, somewhere, and 
there’s not a drop of good blood in the girl’s veins, I’ll 
swear!” 

“There’s an Irish strain in my family, too,” said poor 
Rufford despondently, “and my Emmie has brown hair 
and eyes; and her nose, bless it! is a little tilted at the 
end.” 

“A nay retroussy. So it is, by George ! But there are 
noses and noses, y’know,” said Sir Alured. “And Em- 


THE DELUSION OF MRS. DONOHOE 83 


mie^s a Rufiford, from the crown of her head to the ends 
of her toes; and we’ll prove it, we’ll prove it, sir! Dono- 
hoe hasn’t a leg to stand on” — which was true — “and as 
to that Mullingar heifer” — thus the Chief designated 
Peggy — “she’ll be sorry one day for throwing Juxon over, 
mark my words. Send for that old aunt of Donohoe’s 
dead wife — the bag of bones Peggy talked of — and pump 
her for all she’s worth. Turn her inside out! — it’s the 
only advice I can give you, for my head’s in as dee-d 
a muddle as yours. And remember, whatever happens, 
my Lady is staunch to Emmie! Game woman, my 
Lady. Doesn’t care a dee what society says, as long 

as God bless me, Rufford! I’m talkin’ as though 

Emmie wasn’t your daughter. But the whole thing’s in- 
fernally confusin’, you know, don’t you know!” 

An opinion in which the regiment concurred. An ex- 
cited beehive would have furnished but a poor compari- 
son to the barracks upon the morrow, when Peggy’s great 
news, imparted in ostentatious secrecy to Mrs. Quarter- 
master Casey and a few other non-commissioned officers’ 
ladies, had percolated through them. Visitors thronged 
the Donohoes’ quarters; Peggy was the heroine of the 
hour. Press reporters from the town hung about the 
barracks on the chance of seeing either of the heroines 
of what was termed in the local paper “An Extraordi- 
nary Romance in Real Life,” and the officers’ wives 
called in a body to condole with Emmie Rufford, who, 
as we have heard, had broken off her engagement with 
Captain Gerry Garthside. 

“I shall not break my heart over things,” she had said, 
with an attempt at being everyday and common-sensible 
that was plucky, if not convincing, “and I hope you 
won’t dwell too much upon the collapse of our house of 


84 THE DELUSION OF MRS. DONOHOE 


cards. I hope — I pray you’ll build more solidly, with — 
with somebody else. Don’t, Gerry! Oh, don’t! It’s not 
fair to make my duty harder to do than ” 

Then Emmie had broken down, wept wildly, been 
kissed, consoled, and assured of her lover’s undying love 
and eternal fidelity. Part? Never! Lose such a pearl 
of a wife! Not for all the Donohoes past, present, or to 
come! I believe, in spite of Emmie’s woe and Captain 
Gerry Garthside’s agitation, the young people secretly 
enjoyed the scene dramatic; and when Lady Alured 
came rustling in, about the time when Gerry’s eloquence 
attained its utmost pitch of fervor, and hugged and cried 
over the hero and heroine of the little drama, that dear 
woman was not the least happy of the three. 

And later on, after returning to quarters. Captain 
Garthside found a letter on his doormat. The contents 
of the soiled envelope, directed in a sprawling hand, ran 
as follows: 

“Door No. 3, Ground-floor, Block Q. 

“Miss E. Rufford presents comps And wold be Glad 
to see Cap Garthside & if Yu will call at 2 remane 

“Your Oblidged 

“E. Ruffor” 

Of course the Captain knew Peggy Donohoe; had 
danced with her at non-commissioned ofiicers’ balls; 
given her gloves and chocolates, and sipped the roses of 
her cheek in common with many another passing ad- 
mirer. “And who’d be the worse of a kiss,” as Peggy 
would have said, “from a dacent girl?” “Dacent” she 
undoubtedly was, if not from pure innate virtue, per- 
haps from the consciousness that a depreciation in mar- 
ketable value attaches to goods that have been soiled by 


THE DELUSION OF MRS. DONOHOE 85 


handling. Had it been otherwise, the state of Major 
Rufford had been less gracious, thought Captain Gerry 
Garthside. 

And he looked at Emmie’s photograph standing in a 
silver frame upon his mantelshelf, and remembered the 
piteous smile with which she had told him that every- 
thing must now be over between them, and mentally re- 
newed his vows of fealty before he went round to ‘‘look 
up Peggy.” 

The rooms occupied by the late Sergeant Donohoe 
were three — a kitchen and two bedchambers. One of 
these latter, Peggy, with the assistance of Mrs. Quarter- 
master Casey, a dozen yards of cheap Liberty muslin, a 
gross of Japanese fans, one or two pieces of Oriental 
drapery, and a few articles of furniture of the tottery 
bamboo kind, had converted for the time being into a 
boudoir. Only for the time being, she said to herself, 
because when she got her rights she would enjoy all the 
splendors now usurped by the real Peggy Donohoe — 
Miss Emmie, as she called the usurper when she forgot, 
which was not often. She would dress for dinner every 
evening, and attend balls and theaters in low-necked, 
long-trained frocks, chaperoned by Lady Alured, adorned 
with the late Mrs. Rufford’s diamond stars, and attended 
by Captain Gerry Garthside, V. C. For not one, but all 
the possessions held and prerogatives hitherto enjoyed by 
the false Miss Rufford would naturally devolve to the 
real one, once formally recognized and received by her 
papa and the regiment; the “ould duds” and bits of sticks 
once pertaining to the supposed Margaret Donohoe be- 
ing transferred to the veritable Peggy, together with all 
rights in Private Dancey Juxon, V. C. The topsy-turvy, 
comic-operatic whimsicality of her own idea did not ap- 


86 THE DELUSION OF MRS. DONOHOE 


peal to Peggy’s sense of humor. She was very much in 
earnest as she waited for her visitor, seated in state upon 
one of her own ornamental chairs, her red hands — hands 
which could not be transferred to the real Peggy Dono- 
hoe with the other things — folded in her lap. 

^‘She’s here. Captain,” Mrs. Quartermaster Casey — 
retained as chaperon until Lady Alured should awaken 
to a sense of her duties — had said, opening the door. 

^‘Oh, Captain,” said Peggy, rising coyly, ‘‘is it your- 
self?” 

And, owning the soft impeachment as he squeezed the 
red hand (Gerry Garthside’s manners to the plainest 
woman were fatally caressing), the Captain inquired 
how he could serve her. 

“Sure,” said Peggy, making play with her fine eyes, 
“you’ll maybe thinking me forward. Captain, for makin’ 
the first sign. But me papa — the Major — will be takin’ 
up a great dale of me toime by-an’-by, and wid Mrs. 
Casey sittin’ in the kitchen widin call, we’re givin’ no 
handle to the tongue of scandal, as the sayin’ is ” 

“My dear Miss Peggy! — ” the Captain was beginning, 
when Peggy took him up short. 

“I’ll trouble you,” she said, “to remimber that I’m not 
takin’ any more Peggy from anywan, high or low, an’ 
I’d be glad it was ginerally known. ‘Miss Emmeline,’ 
or ‘Emmie’ for short, you’re free to use, or any pet name 
ye may pick.” She cast a languishing glance upon Cap- 
tain Gerry. “I’m not likely to quarrel wid it” — she 
moved nearer — “or wid you. Och, thin! but ’tis quare 
how things have turned round wid me! Peggy Donohoe 
a week ago, an’ walkin’ out wid Dancey Juxon — an’ now 
— the Major’s daughter, an’ your promised bride, Cap- 
tain jewel! Sure ’tis like a dhrame, it is!” 


THE DELUSION OF MRS. DONOHOE 87 


And Peggy rested her rather large head upon the shoul- 
der of the astonished Captain, who hastily withdrew the 
support. 

‘‘Look here, Peggy, my girl!” he said hastily. “WhaPs 
this notion you’ve got into your noddle? You don’t 
think . . .” 

“I think that you’re a gintleman. Captain,” said 
Peggy, with a tender smile, “and would never go back 
on the promise you gev to the Major’s daughter. An’ 
now that I’m her, an’ she’s me, you’ll do your duty by 
me, as Dancey Juxon will do his to Donohoe’s poor un- 
fortunate girl. You may thrust him. We’ve had it out 
betune us, an’ he’s with her now.” 

“With — her — now?” repeated the bewildered Captain. 

“I sent him to the Major’s — I mane papa’s — quarters 
ten minnits ago, wid a flea in his ear!” said Peggy, fold- 
ing her red hands about the elbow of her captive, and 
rubbing her cheek against his shoulder strap. “ ‘I dar’ 
you,’ sez I, ’to hang about here,’ sez I, ‘makin’ sheep’s 
eyes at a daughter av the Quality, whin that poor cray- 
ture you gev your promise to is cryin’ her two eyes out 
for the gliff av a glimpse av your red head. Away wid 
you,’ sez I, ‘an’ prove yourself a man av your word, 
Dancey Juxon, or maybe Peggy Donohoe’ll be takin’ the 
law av you wan av these fine days!” 

“My good girl,” said Gerry Garthside, almost plead- 
ingly, “you can’t really believe what you say you’ve 
told Juxon — that he is obliged to marry Miss Rufford, or 
the lady who has borne that name until now, because he 
happens to have given a promise of marriage to Peggy 
Donohoe, and Miss Rufford and Peggy have changed 
places?” 

“I mane that!” Peggy’s black eyes snapped out 


88 THE DELUSION OF MRS. DONOHOE 


sparks of fire; as she tossed her head, a loosened coil of 
black hair tumbled upon her shoulder. Her fine bust 
heaved, her cheeks burned scarlet — she had never looked 
finer in her life. ‘‘Do I not mane just that? Think! 
Isn’t her father mine? Isn’t her home my home? — ^the 
dhress she wears upon her back mine? — the ring she has 
upon the finger av her mine? Ah, musha, an’ the man 
that put it there!” Her grasp on Captain Gerry’s arm 
tightened, her eyes sought his and held his; her warm, 
fragrant breath came and went about his face like a per- 
sonal caress. “Sure, dear, you’ll not regret ut,” said 
Peggy, “for I loved you iver since I clapped my two 
eyes on you — I take the Blessed Saints to witness 1 An’ 
Dancey Juxon’ll be dacent to Donohoe’s daughter, an’ 
you an’ me will be afther lendin’ the young couple a 
hand, lettin’ her have the washin’ maybe, or the waitin’ 
at our table — or by-an’-by” — she lowered her black 
lashes — “she might come as nurse to the children. So, 
darlin’ . . 

The sentence was never finished, for the alarmed Cap- 
tain broke from the toils and fled. The Mess story goes 
that he double-locked his outer door, barricaded the in- 
ner one with a chest of drawers and a portable tin 
shower bath, and spent the rest of the day in recon- 
noitering from behind the window curtains in anticipa- 
tion of a descent of the enemy. But in reality he bent 
his steps toward the North Quadrangle, where the Ma- 
jor’s quarters were, and over the familiar blue crockery 
window boxes full of daffodils, he caught a glimpse of 
Emmie’s sweet face, not pale or bearing marks of se- 
cretly shed tears as when he last kissed it, but bright- 
eyed, flushed, and dimpling with laughter as she nodded 
and waved her hand to a departing visitor, who, ab- 


THE DELUSION OF MRS. DONOHOE 89 


sorbed in the charming vision, glimpsed above the daffo- 
dils, collided with and cannoned off the Captain. 

“Hullo! You, Juxon?” 

“Beg pardon, sir,” said Private Juxon, rigidly at the 
salute. “I ’ope I ’aven’t ’urt you!” He grinned happily. 

“Have you come into a fortune, or inherited a title? 
You look pretty chirpy!” said the Captain. 

“Not a bad ’it of ’is by ’arf,” said Private Juxon criti- 
cally to Private Juxon, “about the cornin’ into a title. 
Tor,’ says she, Hhe greatest gentleman in the land 
couldn^t ^ave done more — and though I can^t accept your 
offer, I shall always look up to you and respect you as 
the most chivalrousest and honor ablest man I ever 
metF Wot price me, after that?” 

For, as may be guessed. Private Juxon had proposed, 
and been rejected. Standing very stiff and red and up- 
right on the passage door mat, he had confessed his sense 
of responsibility and explained his views. 

“The general run of feelin’ in the regiment bein’ the 
same. Miss, as her own, that I’m bound as a man to keep 
my promise to Peggy Donohoe, whether she’s you or you 
are ’er. I’ve took the freedom of callin’ to say as wot 
I’m ready,” said Juxon. “An’ the weddin’ was to come 
off in June; but you’ve only got to name an earlier day. 
Miss, an’ I’ll ’ave the banns put up, you not bein’ a 
Catholic, like Peggy — which I ought to call ’er Miss Ruf- 
ford now, as owing to ’er station. Miss. But if you think 
I’ll ever come short in duty an’ respect to the Major’s 
daughter, because she’s turned out to be only the Ser- 
geant’s, you’re wrong. Miss, you’re wrong— upon my 
bloo upon my ’tarnal soul!” 

And then it was that Emmie Rufford conferred upon 
Private Juxon the title of nobility, which made him a 


90 THE DELUSION OF MRS. DONOHOE 


proud man — and unconditionally refused his offer, mak- 
ing him a happy one. 

She is now married to Captain Gerry Garthside, who 
yet fulfilled his engagement to the Senior Major’s daugh- 
ter in leading her to the altar. For within a week the 
bubble had burst, topsy-turvydom reigned no more, the 
barracks ceased to seethe like one of its own mess caul- 
drons, and Peggy Donohoe was compelled to relinquish 
the privilege of calling Major Rufford “Papa.” For old 
Aunt Biddy Kinsella had been discovered in the smoki- 
est corner of her grandson’s cottage at Carricknaclee, in 
Aher, by a smart young solicitor’s clerk; and her sworn 
deposition, duly marked with her cross and attested by 
her parish priest, dispersed the clouds of doubt from the 
Major’s horizon, relieved Sir Alured’s moustache from 
an unusual strain, and proved the deceased Mrs. Dono- 
hoe to have been the victim of a delusion. 

“For ’twas at Buttevant Barracks where the regi- 
ment was stationed nineteen years ago, an’ me stayin’ on 
a visit wid me niece, that I saw her — Maggie Donohoe — 
rest her unaisy soul, the misfortnit craythur! — I saw her 
change the children’s clothes wid the two eyes I have in 
my head,” said Aunt Biddy Kinsella, “barrin’ that only 
wan av thim was at the keyhole. ^Och, murdher!’ sez 1, 
lettin’ a screech an’ flyin’ in on her — for I had the use 
av me legs in thim days — Vhat have you done, woman, 
asthore?’ ‘Made a lady av little Peggy,’ says she, wid 
the fingers av her hooked like claws ready to fly at me, 
‘an’ I dar’ you to bethray me.’ ‘Bethrayl’ sez I. ‘It’s 
bethrayed her to the divil, you mane — that she’ll be 
brought up a black Prodesdan’, and not a dacent Catho- 
lic, as a Donohoe should be by rights.’ ‘Holy Virgin, 
forgive me! Sure, I never thought av that!’ sez herself. 


THE DELUSION OF MRS. DONOHOE 91 


and all thrimblin^ we undhressed the children an 
changed the clothes again. An^ a day or so afther the 
Major^s baby was waned an’ wint back to uts mother. 
But Maggie Donohoe was niver the same in her mind 
afther that day. Sit an’ brood she would, an’ hour by 
hour; an’ creep out av her own bed an’ into mine night 
afther night, and wake me wid her cowld hand upon me 
mouth an’ the whisper in me ear to know had she given 
little Peggy’s sowl to the divil or changed the childhren 
back afther all! An’ as years wint on she kem to a 
quieter mind, but on her dyin’ bed the ould fear and 
thrimblin’ got hould av her ag’in, an’ she tould Dono- 
hoe — not what she’d done at all, at all! — but what she 
wanst had the intintion av doin’, but that her heart 
failed her; an’ so made a fool av the man that owned 
her, as many another woman has done before!” 

Thus Aunt Biddy Kinsella, who, having spoken, may 
be dismissed to her smoky corner under the turf thatch, 
where a greasy parcel reached her in the middle of the 
following June, containing, not an olive branch, but a 
concrete slab of wedding cake, with the joint compli- 
ments of Mr. and Mrs. Dancey Juxon. For ^^the general 
run of feelin’ in the regiment” was in favor of Private 
Juxon’s renewing his matrimonial engagements to Peggy 
Donohoe, now that she had been proved, past all doubt, 
to be herself. And by the last advices received from 
headquarters it appears that Mrs. Lance-Corporal Juxon 
is acting at this moment as nurse to the Garthside baby. 


PONSONBY AND THE PANTHERESS 


I HAVE called this story ‘Tonsonby and the Pan- 
theress/’ because Ponsonby’s nocturnal visitor un- 
doubtedly belonged to the genus Carnaria, species F. 
pardus, the Pardalis of the ancients. The whole thing 
hinges on Ponsonby's getting a ticket of invitation to a 
mighty dinner given by one of the great City Livery 
Companies. Had he refused the invitation, and stayed 
at home with Mrs. Ponsonby, it would have been better 
for him — and for her. He would not to-day have been 
a silent, atrabilious man, who goes upon his way in lone- 
liness — that mated loneliness which is of all desolate con- 
ditions on this earth the most desolate — ^with a vampire 
gnawing underneath his waistcoat. She would not have 
been a much-wronged, cruelly neglected woman — or the 
other type of sufferer, the woman who has been found 
out; and forever robbed of that which women hold dear- 
est in life — the power to create illusions. 

It was a great dinner at that City Hall — a feast both 
succulent and juicy, and upon a scale so prodigious as to 
put it utterly beyond the power of a single-stomached 
man to do justice thereto. Many of the guests had 
thoughtfully provided themselves with several of these 
necessary organs, but Ponsonby — who had recently sold 
out of the Army, and invested his commission money in 
business, and settled down with Mrs. Ponsonby in a neat 

92 


PONSONBY AND THE PANTHERESS 93 

little house in Sloane Street — was still young, and fairly 
slim. 

The baked meats and confectionery were excellent, and 
‘The drinks” — as Betsey Prig might have observed — 
“was good.” It was revealed to Ponsonby that he had 
absorbed a considerable quantity only by the swollen 
condition of his latchkey when he tried to fit it into the 
door of the little house in Sloane Street. But after a 
short struggle the door opened, and Ponsonby paused a 
moment on the doorstep to take some observations on the 
weather. It was just one o’clock as he looked at his 
watch in the moonlight. Ponsonby was reminded of In- 
dian moons by the lucent brightness of the broad silver 
orb that floated so majestically on the calm bosom of the 
dark overhead. She was getting near her wane, but only 
notifying it by an exaggerated handsomeness, like a pro- 
fessional Society beauty. Ponsonby thought of that 
simile — all by himself — and was proud of it, as he had 
always been a man more celebrated for his moustache 
than his intellect. He tied a knot in his mental pocket 
handkerchief to remember it by, and, facing round to go 
into the house, was a little disconcerted to find the hall 
door gaping to receive him. 

Then he went in, barred and bolted very carefully, 
and set the spring burglar alarum — for once. Ponsonby 
was unusually careful and deliberate in his movements 
on this particular night. Then he sat down on the hall 
bench and took off his boots. Then he switched off the 
electric hall light. Then he pondered whether he should 
or should not have just one brandy and soda before go- 
ing to bed — because he had come home so clear and 
calm and cool-headed from that City dinner. Ay or No 
— and the Ayes had it. He went into the dining-room. 


94 PONSONBY AND THE PANTHERESS 


It had been furnished for the Ponsonbys on the best 
authority; in oak, with Brummagem-Benares brass pots 
and tea trays. The window curtains, and the drapery 
which hung before a deepish recess in the wall to the left 
of the door as you entered, were plush, of that artistic 
shade of olive-green which is so shabby when it is new 
that you can't tell when it gets old. The recess had 
originally been intended for a book case; but young 
married people just starting in life never have any books 
— they are too much bound up in each other — and so it 
had been covered up. You can put things behind a cov- 
ering of this sort which you do not care to expose to the 
gaze of the casual guest — a row of old slippers, or a pile 
of superannuated Army Lists, or a collection of sum- 
monses — or the Family Skeleton. 

Ponsonby switched on the light, and opened the liquor 
case with his watch-chain key, and got a tumbler and 
soda siphon from the buffet, and lighted a cigar. Then 
he sat down in an armchair, unbuttoned his white waist- 
coat, loosened his collar, and prepared to be lonelily con- 
vivial. He thought of his girl-like bride asleep upstairs, 
with her cheek upon her hand, and her gold-brown hair 
swamping the pillow. It says much for the state of 
Ponsonby's affections, that while he knew the uses of 
the monthly half pint of peroxide which was an unfail- 
ing item on the chemist’s bill, he could still be poetical 
about that tinge of gold. But newly married men seldom 
look into the roots of anything. He lifted his glass and 
drank her health. “To Mamie!” he said, as the frisky 
gas bubbles snapped at his nose. And then he glanced 
over the edge of the tumbler at the curtained recess be- 
hind the door. And the short hairs of his head rose up 
and began to promenade. And his teeth clicked against 


PONSONBY AND THE PANTHERESS 95 


the glass he held. For a bolt of ice had shot through 
either ear orifice straight to his brain. In other words — 
Something had laughed — an ugly laugh — behind that 
drawn curtain. 

In another moment it was put aside. A woman came 
out of the recess that had concealed her, and stood be- 
fore him. 

Not to mince matters, she belonged to the class we are 
content to call unfortunate. From her tawdry bonnet to 
the mud-befouled hem of her low-necked silk dress — a 
preposterous garment, grease-stained and ragged, and 
partly hidden by an opera cloak of sullied whiteness — 
the nature of her profession was written on her from 
head to foot. She was not without beauty, or the 
archaeological traces of what had been it; but as she 
grinned at the astonished man, showing two rows of 
strong square teeth, yellowed with liquor and cigarette 
smoking, and the gathered muscles of her cheeks pushed 
up her under lids, narrowing her fierce, greedy eyes to 
mere slits, and the hood of her soiled mantle fell back 
from her coarsely dyed hair, she was a thing unlovely. 
She seemed to snuff the air with her broad nostrils, as 
scenting prey ; she worked her fingers in their dirty white 
gloves, as though they were armed with talons that 
longed to tear and rend; and, as she did so, Ponsonby 
was irresistibly reminded of a panther. 

Ponsonby had shot panthers in India, and had once 
been slightly mauled by a female specimen. It was an 
odd coincidence that the old scars on his left shoulder 
and thigh should have begun to burn and throb and 
shoot unpleasantly as the yellow-white fangs of the in- 
truder gleamed upon him, framed in by her grinning, 
painted lips. 


96 PONSONBY AND THE PANTHERESS 


But Ponsonby recovered himself after a moment, and 
asked her, without ceremony, how the devil she came 
there? He was not a particularly bright man, but he 
knew, even as he asked. She had been crouching in the 
shadow under the portico — some of the Sloane Street 
houses have porticoes — when his cab drove up. She had 
watched him get out. Then, when he had been standing 
with his foolish back to the open door, gaping at the 
moon, the Pantheress had skulked in, with the noiseless, 
cushioned step that distinguishes her race. And now he 
had to get rid of her. 

Which was not as easy a task as one might think. 

He began by telling her that he was a married man. 

“Knew that,” said the Pantheress. “Saw you take off 
your boots in the hall. Saw you drink her health.” She 
mimicked him. “To Mamie!” And laughed again — that 
unspeakably jarring laugh. 

Ponsonby grew irate. He took his courage in both 
hands and went into the hall, where he softly undid the 
door fastenings. Then he came back, and offered to 
show his visitor out. 

She was in the act of pocketing a silver race cup, won 
by Ponsonby at a Pony Hurdle Handicap on the Bom- 
bay course in 1890, when Ponsonby came back. He 
caught her wrist and bade her drop it. She gave it up 
sullenly. Then, with a sudden accession of feminine 
meekness, she said she would go — if he would stand her 
a drink. 

It seemed a cheap bargain. The unwitting Ponsonby 
got out another glass from the buffet cupboard, and 
mixed her a brandy and soda, not too weak. She drew a 
chair — his wife’s chair — to the table, and sat down, 
throwing her dingy cloak from her whitewashed shoul- 


PONSONBY AND THE PANTHERESS 97 


ders. She put her hand to her head, and drew thence 
a long steel pin with a blue glass head, and took her 
gaudy bonnet off and threw it on the table. She did not 
hurry over the consumption of the liquid, and Ponsonby 
began to grow impatient. When he hinted this, she 
asked for a cigar. 

He gave her one, and a light. And she drained the 
last drop in the tumbler, and stuck the burning weed 
between her teeth, with a coarse masquerade of mas- 
culinity. Ponsonby heaved a sigh of relief. 

“Now, my girl, come along — time’s up!” He started 
for the door. 

The Pantheress got up, and leaned against the mantel 
shelf, smoking. She intimated that she had changed her 
mind — and would remain. Ponsonby lost his temper, 
and threatened ejection by main force. 

“Put me out? You daren’t!” rejoined the Pantheress. 
She added some adjectives reflecting upon Ponsonby and 
the honor of his family — but with those we have nothing 
to do. 

Ponsonby ’s under jaw came out, and his forehead low- 
ered. He strode toward the Pantheress; her sex was not 
going to plead for that delicate piece of femininity, it 
was evident. 

“I daren’t, eh?” 

“You daren’t. Because I’d tear, and scratch, and 
scream, I would — till the police came — till your wife 
woke up and came downstairs to see what the row was 
about. Nice for you, then! Easy for you to explain — 
with two glasses on the table!” 

Ponsonby broke into a cool perspiration. He spake in 
his soul and cursed himself for a fool — of all fools the 
one most thoroughly impregnated with foolery. For he 


98 PONSONBY AND THE PANTHERESS 


saw that he had been trapped. The Pantheress rocked 
upon her hips and laughed, shaking out a coarse aroma 
of patchouli from her shabby garments. 

^‘You had me in and stood me drinks. I can swear to 
that. My swell toff, I think you'd better knock under!” 

Ponsonby had to arrive at that conclusion, thinking of 
his wedded happiness and the golden-brown hair scat- 
tered on the pillow upstairs. He was awed to the pitch 
of making overtures — of asking the Pantheress how 
much she would take to go? 

The Pantheress sprang high. Twenty pounds. 

Ponsonby had not as much in the house. With great 
difficulty, and much exercise of eloquence, he got her to 
bate five. It was necessary that she should be brought 
to forego another five, for all the ready cash he could 
muster did not amount to much more than ten. How to 
attain this desirable end? Ponsonby had a dramatic in- 
spiration. 

He had read many novels and seen many plays. In 
most of these the main plot turned upon the ultimate 
victory of Human Virtue and Truth over Vice and Dis- 
integrity. In these books or dramas Vice was generally 
personified by an adventuress — a brazen, defiant person, 
who had made up her mind to ruin somebody or an- 
other; and Virtue, by an innocent girl or pure young 
wife, who pleaded until the hardened heart was melted, 
the fierce eyes moistened by an unaccustomed tear — un- 
til, in short, the naughty woman abandoned her unhal- 
lowed purpose and left the nice one mistress of the field. 
The theory is an admirable one in a book or in a play, 
but in real life it does not hold good. Ponsonby has 
since learned this; but at that time he was youngish and 
inexperienced. 


PONSONBY AND THE PANTHERESS 99 


He would weave a net, with those golden-brown tresses 
upstairs, in which to catch the Pantheress. He begged 
her to listen, and told his story quite prettily. He ex- 
plained how, three years before, his regiment having 
newly returned from India, he had met at a certain 
South Coast resort, separated by a mile or two of arid 
common from a great dockyard town, a lovely girl. She 
was a friendless orphan, the daughter of a clergyman, 
had been a governess, had broken down in health, and, 
with the last remnant of her little savings, taken a hum- 
ble lodging near the sea, in order to benefit by the ozone. 
How she had found, during her innocent strolls on the 
beach, not only that health of which she had been in 
search, but a husband. And, finally, how every fiber of 
her soul, being naturally bound up in that husband, and 
her present state of health delicate, the infliction of such 
a blow as the Pantheress contemplated striking might 
not only strike at the roots of love, but of life. 

With which peroration counsel concluded, not wholly 
dissatisfied with himself. He wiped his brow, and sent a 
hopeful glance at the Pantheress. Her features had not 
softened, nor was her eye dimmed. Her lips twitched, 
certainly, but the convulsive movement was merely the 
herald of a yawn. 

“YouVe a good one to jaw!” she said, when he had 
finished. ^‘Come, I’ll not be hard on you. How much 
have you got?” 

He named the amount. 

^‘Hand out!” the Pantheress bade him. 

He would give her half the sum then and there, Pon- 
sonby said, with a gleam of strategic cunning, and the 
other half when she was fairly outside the hall door — 
not before. 


100 PONSONBY AND THE PANTHERESS 


The Pantheress nodded, and clutched the first install- 
ment from his hand greedily, and caught her dirty bon- 
net from the table and threw it on her head. “No 
larks she said warningly — “come onl’^ and moved to 
the room door, where she paused. “Ain’t you got man- 
ners enough to open it for a lady?” she remarked in an 
aggrieved tone. Ponsonby, hastily restoring the tell-tale 
second glass to the sideboard, sprang forward and 
grasped the handle — and dropped it as though it had 
been red-hot, for he had caught the sound of footsteps— 
light, regular, measured footsteps — descending the stairs. 
He could not utter a word. He turned a white face and 
glaring eyes upon the Pantheress. And the steps came 
nearer. As the dining-room door opened, he fell back, 
helplessly, behind it. The wall seemed to open and 
swallow him — thick, suffocating folds fell before his 
face; he had backed into the curtained recess whence the 
Pantheress had emerged thirty fateful minutes previ- 
ously. Through a three-cornered rent in the stuff, just 
the height of his eye from the ground, and through which 
that beast of prey had probably watched him, he looked 
— and saw his wife! 

She wore a loose white wrapping gown; her hair — the 
hair — hung in waves about her shoulders. Barring the 
bedroom candle she carried, and losing sight of her pro- 
saic nineteenth-century surroundings, she resembled one 
of Burne Jones’s angels. But her calm expression 
changed, and her voice was tuned to a key of unangelic 
indignation, as her glance lighted on the painted, brazen 
Defiance, erect and bristling, before her. 

“You ... a woman, what do you want? How did 
you? — how dared you come here?” 

The Pantheress was about, in answer, to launch the 


PONSONBY AND THE PANTHERESS 101 


first of an elaborate flight of insults, couched in the easy 
vernacular of Leicester Square, when she stopped short. 
Her thick lips rolled back from her gleaming fangs in a 
triumphant grin. She bent forward, with her hands 
upon her thighs, and made a close inspection of the face 
of Ponsonby’s wife. 

^‘What! Lucer . . . 

The other recoiled, with a slight cry. And Ponsonby, 
in his retirement, was conscious of a deadly qualm — for 
Mrs. Ponsonby ’s Christian name was Lucy! When he 
opened his shut eyes and peeped through the rent again, 
it was only to receive a fresh shock — for Mrs. Ponsonby 
and the Pantheress were sitting, one on either side of 
the table, chatting like old friends. 

*‘Luck was poor,” the Pantheress was saying, ^^and me 
low down in my spirits. So when I found the door of a 
swell house like this open, T’ll pop in,^ says I to myself, 
^and look about for a snack of something and a drop to 
drink, and then make off if I can, clear, or else go to 
quod — like a lady.^ And I did pop in — and I did look 
about — and the first thing that turns up is — ^you! On a 
smooth lay, ain’t you? Always a daring one, you were. 
A clergyman’s daughter, and an orphan! We’ve most of 
us been clergymen’s daughters and orphans in our time, 
but not a girl of us ever looked it more than you. And 
you’re married! Ha! ha! With a swell church service, 
and singin’, and a Continental tour to give the orphan 
a little change of scenery. She’d seen so little in her 
time, the poor dear! Lord! I shall die of it!” 

The woman rocked with silent laughter. It seemed to 
the man behind the curtain that her eyes, across his 
wife’s shoulder, glared full into his — that her coarse 
jeers were leveled at him. He could not have uttered a 


102 PONSONBY AND THE PANTHERESS 


sound, or stirred a finger, for the dear life. A kind of 
catalepsy had possessed him. But he saw them drink 
together, and heard them talk . . . turning over with 
conversational pitchforks the unspeakable horrors of the 
dunghill whence his white butterfly had taken wing. . . . 
Ponsonby had never been an imaginative man, but that 
midnight conference wrought his sensibilities to such a 
pitch that, leaning against the wall in the corner of the 
curtained recess, he quietly fainted. 

He came back to consciousness in darkness through 
which struggled no gleam of light. He did not know 
where he was Until he staggered out from behind the 
stifling draperies and switched on the light with shaking 
hands. Then he found himself in his own dining-room. 
There were no glasses on the table — the spring bar of 
the liquor stand was in its place, the brandy decanter 
was, as he remembered to have left it, half full. He 
found his candle on the sideboard and lighted it, and 
went into the hall. The hall door was barred and bolted. 

^‘Thank God, I have been dreaming said Ponsonby, 
and went upstairs. 

There she lay — a breathing picture of reposeful inno- 
cence — fast asleep. Ponsonby stooped and kissed the 
hair that flooded her pillow and invaded his own, and 
silently swore by all his deities that he would never go to 
another City dinner as long as he lived. Before he crept 
into bed he knelt down — a thing he had not done since 
he was a boy — and said awkwardly, ^‘0 God, I'm glad it 
was a dream! Thank you!'' 

He slept the sleep of the weary, and rose, not a giant, 
it is true, but very much refreshed. He dandered down 
to the breakfast table in a leisurely way, humming a 


PONSONBY AND THE PANTHERESS 103 


tune. As he shook out his newspaper, the absurdity and 
improbability of his recent vision struck him for the first 
time; he laughed until he ached. Then he dropped his 
newspaper, and stooped to pick it up. Something bright 
that lay upon the carpet under the table attracted his 
notice. The man put forth his hand and took it, and hiS 
ruddy morning face underwent a strange and ghastly 
alteration. For the thing was a long steel bonnet pin, 
with a vulgar blue glass head! Men have died suddenly 
of pin pricks before now. 

But Ponsonby’s tortures are lingering. He is alive 
still, and she is still Mrs. Ponsonby. He has never 
spoken — the Secret of the Blue Glass Pin is hidden from 
the woman who walks Life’s path with him. But some- 
times she is haunted by a dreadful Doubt, and at all 
times he is bestridden by an overwhelming Certainty. 


A FAT GIRL’S LOVE STORY 


In Three Parts 

I 

T he first thing I remember being told is that I was a 
Parksop, and the second that it was worth while 
living, if only to have that name. Some years after, it 
dawned upon me that we had got very little else. 

Father was a landed proprietor upon a reduced scale, 
and a parent on a large one. There were twelve of us, 
counting Prenderby, who had passed into the Army a 
few years previously, and passed out of it later on at the 
unanimous request of his superior officers. Father cut 
him off with a shilling — ^which he forgot to send him — 
and sternly forbade him to bear the name of Parksop 
any more. He has done well since, and attributes his rise 
in life entirely to that deprivation. Nobody ever writes 
to Prenderby except Charlotte. 

If an abnormally fat girl could possibly be the heroine 
of a romantic love story, Charlotte — “Podge,” as she has 
been nicknamed ever since I can remember — would 
stand in that relation to this narrative. But, you know, 
such a thing isn’t possible. If it had been. Belle, who 
comes in between Podge and Prenderby, and is the ac- 
knowledged beauty of the family, having all the hered- 
itary Parksop points besides several of her own, no- 
body would have wondered. 

How did the story begin? With Roderick and me — 
104 


A FAT GIRL’S LOVE STORY 


105 


coming home to spend a vacation. It was likely to be 
a pretty long one, for the Head of the School had be- 
haved in a most ungentlemanly way, showing absolutely 
crass insensibility, as father said, to the advantage of 
having one of the best names in England on his school 
list, while it remained written at the bottom of a check 
for fifty-nine pounds, odd shillings, and half-pence, 
marked by a groveling-spirited bank cashier “No As- 
sets.” 

You may guess Roddy and me didn’t grumble much 
— the Parksops have never been strong in grammar and 
orthography, so I’m not going to apologize for a slip 
here and there — didn’t grumble much at hearing that we 
were to stay at home for the present, and be “brought 
on” by the curate in Euclid and Latin and Greek, and 
all the rest of the rot. He wouldn’t strike for wages, 
father knew, because for one thing he was very modest 
and shy, and for another he was spoons on Belle. If he 
wasn’t, why was he always glaring at our pew in 
church? And for the same reason we shouldn’t be over- 
worked — a thing the most reckless boys acknowledge to 
be bad for them. So the morning after our return we 
went down to breakfast feeling as jolly as could be. 

Father shook hands with us in his lofty way. We 
could see that he was deeply indignant with the Head 
from the way in which his aquiline nose hooked itself 
when we gave him a letter we’d brought with us. We 
almost wished we had torn it up, because, having made 
up our minds to go fishing that morning, we had meant 
to ask him for the key of the old boat house by the pond, 
where the punt was kept, which key, with a disregard of 
opportunity quite unnatural, as Roddy said — in a man 
with so large a family — he always kept hidden away. 


106 A FAT GIRL’S LOVE STORY 


Belle gave us two fingers to shake and her ear to kiss, 
and the others, as many as were allowed to breakfast 
with the elders, crowded round, and then Podge came 
bouncing in and hugged us for everybody. We didn’t 
care about the hugging, because it was such a smother- 
ing business, like sinking into a sea of eiderdown, Roddy 
used to say, who was imaginative for a Parksop. And 
here, as it’s usual to describe a heroine — though I don’t 
acknowledge her for one, you know — it would be best to 
describe Podge a little. 

It describes her kind of temper pretty well to say that 
she didn’t mind being called Podge — even before 
strangers. The name describes her exactly. You 
couldn’t tone it down and call her plump; she was sim- 
ply one of the fattest girls you ever saw. Her large 
face was rosy, and usually beamed, as people say in 
books, with smiles and good temper. Her hair was 
black, and done up in the way that took the least time, 
and her eyes were black and bright, and would have been 
big if her face had been a little less moonlike. She had 
little dumpy hands and little dumpy feet, rather pretty — 
in fact, the only family landmarks, as Belle said, that 
had not been effaced by the rising tide of fat. In a 
regular story there is always something about the 
heroine’s waist: not that I give in to Podge being — you 
know! I suppose she had a waist; at least, it was possi- 
ble to tell where her frock bodies left off and her skirts 
began — then. It isn’t now I The frocks were always old, 
because whenever Podge had a new one she gave it to 
Belle, and you couldn’t deny that Belle did them more 
justice. Then, she had a nice kind of voice, though the 
Parksop drawl had been left out of it, and I think that’s 
all — except that, considering her beam, she moved about 


A FAT GIRL’S LOVE STORY 107 

lightly, and that she always sat down like a collapsing 
feather bed and got up like an expanding balloon. 

Breakfast didn’t make the school commons look very 
foolish. There wasn’t much difference, except that the 
coffee wasn’t so groundy. Father had his little dish of 
something special — kidneys, this time — and Roddy, sit- 
ting at his right hand — we were treated as guests the first 
day at home — dived in under his elbow when he was 
deep in his coffee cup and harpooned half a one. Of 
course, he had to bolt it before father came to the sur- 
face, and Podge was dreadfully anxious, seeing him so 
purple in the face, lest he should choke. 

I did as well as I could with my rasher of bacon and 
hers, and I remember her whispering to me, just before 
Nuddles came in with the Squire’s card, that the house- 
keeping money had been lately more limited than ever. 
And as I looked across the table, out at the window, and 
over the green, rolling Surrey landscape — all Parksop 
property in our ancestors’ times — and remembered that 
such a small slice of it was left to be divided between 
such a lot of us, it did occur to me that it would have 
been better if they — meaning the ancestors — had been a 
little less Parksopian in the way of not being able to 
keep what they had got. Then Nuddles, the butler, came 
in with Squire Braddlebury’s card, and the curtain drew 
up — we had had a performance of one of the plays of 
Terence that very half year, and I had done the part of 
a dumb slave to everybody’s admiration — and the cur- 
tain drew up on what would have been ‘‘Podge’s Ro- 
mance,” if Podge had only been thinner. 


108 


A FAT GIRL’S LOVE STORY 


II 

Father broke up the breakfast party with getting up 
and going out. As a rule nobody dared push back his or 
her chair until he had finished, and when he took it into 
his head to read one of the leaders in the Times aloud to 
us, we had to make up our minds to spend the after- 
noon. But as a rule he went to the library as soon as 
he'd done, and worked until lunch. He usually worked 
leaning back in his armchair, with his feet on a footstool, 
and a silk handkerchief thrown over his head. He went 
to the library now, to meet the Squire, whose gruff 
“Good morning" Roddy and I heard as father opened 
the door. He didn't quite shut it afterward, and as 
Roddy and I stood by the hall table, carefully sewing 
up the sleeves of the Squire's covert coat — for Podge had 
given us each a neat pocket needle-and-thread case, to 
teach us to be tidy, she said, and a taste for practical 
joking isn't incompatible with lofty lineage — ^we couldn't 
help hearing some of the conversation. 

It was most of it on the Squire's side, and the words 
“title deeds," “unentailed," and “mortgage" occurred 
over and over again. Then “unpaid," “due notice," 
“neglected," and, finally, “foreclosure." Perhaps it was 
father's giving a hollow groan at this, and being seen by 
me through the crack of the library door to tear his hair, 
beautifully white, without tearing any of it out, that 
made me listen. At any rate, I left Roddy busy with the 
coat, and — any other boy, even a Parksop by birth, 
would have done as much under the circumstances. 

Well, I made out that Squire Braddlebury had got 
father on toast. It became quite plain to me, boy as I 


A FAT GIRL’S LOVE STORY 


109 


was, that he could, whenever he chose, strip us of the 
last remaining hundreds of our old acres, and send us, 
generally, packing to Old Gooseberry — with a word. 
Then he asked father why he thought he didn’t say the 
word then and there? and father said something about 
respect for ancient title and hereditary something or 
other; and Squire Braddlebury, who had made his vul- 
gar money in trade, said ancient title and hereditary 
something or other might be dee’d. And then 

^T’ll tell you why, Parksop,” he blustered. ‘Tt’s be- 
cause of your girl ! When you came to me for money to 
waste on your gobbling, selfish old self, caring, not you, 
not one snap whether your family went bare for the rest 
o’ their lives, so long as you got what you wanted for the 
rest of yours, I lent you the cash on your title deeds, 
signed by Edward Plantagenet — and more fool he to 
waste good land on you ! I lent you the cash, I say, be- 
cause I knew you’d not come up to the mark when pay 
day came, and I wanted your girl. What’s that you say? 
Belle! Not if I know it! Sandy hair and aquiline pro- 
files don’t agree with me. I mean Miss Charlotte. 
She’s a fine, full figure of a woman ; she’s a good ’un, too ! 
Don’t I know how she keeps your house a-going? Don’t 
I know how she makes and mends, plans and contrives, 
teaches the children when your foreign governesses take 
French leave, because they can’t get their wages out of 
you, Parksop, and does the Lord knows what besides ! I 
shouldn’t have spoken so soon, but another fellow’s got 
his eye on her — Noel, the parson — you know who I mean. 
I believe they’re secretly engaged, or something.” 

^^Gracious Heavens!” cried father. 

“If they are,” growled the Squire, “it don’t matter. 
We’ll soon put the curate to the right-about, and on the 
day I take her to church you’ll get your title deeds back. 


110 


A FAT GIRL’S LOVE STORY 


You’re reasonable, I see. It’s a bargain. So go and 
fetch her, Parksop; go and fetch her.” 

There was a scroop and shriek of overstrained springs 
and tortured leather. The Squire had thrown himself 
into father’s armchair. I had only time to drag Roddy 
behind the green baize door that shuts off the servants’ 
wing from the rest of the house, when father came out 
of the library. 


Ill 

The whole house was topsy-turvy. The secret of the 
mortgage was out, for one thing. Everybody knew that 
the Squire had proposed to Podge, that Podge had said 
“No” to him, in spite of father’s dignified commands, and 
that the Squire had rushed out of the house, foaming at 
the mouth, with his coat half on and half off, stormed 
his way round to the stables, where he saddled his horse 
himself, and galloped homeward, scattering objurgations, 
threats, and imprecations right and left. 

“Stuck-up paupers! Make Parksop know better! 

Sell ’em up, stick and stone! Prefer d d curate to 

me, Thomas Braddlebury! Fool! Must be crazy!” 

Roddy and I and everybody else agreed with him, ex- 
cept Podge. She was regularly downright obstinate. She 
had given in to all of us all her life, and now, just when 
her giving in meant so much, she wouldn’t. What was 
the good of beginning, we asked, if she didn’t intend to 
go on? We were very severe with her, because she de- 
served it. Falling in love at her size — like a milkmaid 
— and with an elderly curate — an old-young man, with 
shabby clothes and a stoop! Belle had put up with his 
staring at our pew when he read the Litany on Sundays, 
but now that she was quite sure he hadn’t been doing it 


A FAT GIRL’S LOVE STORY 


111 


because of her, she regarded it as an unpardonable in- 
sult. She stirred up father to write to the Rector de- 
manding Mr. Noel’s instant dismissal, and the Rector 
sent back an old, unsettled claim for tithe money, and 
referred father to the Bishop of the diocese. 

Meanwhile, Podge was the victim of love. It was 
really funny. She cried quarts at night, according to 
Belle. Her red nose and swollen eyes made her funnier 
still. And old Noel stooped more going about his parish 
work. He was a gentleman — that was one thing to be 
said for him — and if two perfectly healthy lives had not 
stood between him and the title, he’d have been a baro- 
net, with a rent roll worth having, the Rector’s wife said. 

They say dropping wears away a stone. We dropped 
on Podge from morning till night, and she gave in at last. 
She put on her hat and trotted down to the Rectory — 
waddled would be the best word. She saw Noel, and had 
it out viva voce. She’d tried to do it by letter — Belle 
found a torn-up note of dismissal in her room, begin- 
ning ^‘My lost Darling.” We yelled over the notion of 
old Noel being Podge’s lost darling; almost before we’d 
done yelling she was back again, and had smothered the 
little ones all round, and gone to the library with a flag 
of truce — a wet pocket handkerchief — ^to announce the 
capitulation to father. She spoke to me afterward, 
looked appealing, as if she wanted to be praised for doing 
a simple thing like that for her family! I didn’t praise 
her, and Roddy gave her even less encouragement. 

The Squire was sent for by special messenger, and 
came without hurrying. He said he was glad she’d come 
to her senses and showed a proper appreciation of the 
gifts Providence had placed within her reach. He 
brought a diamond engagement ring, which wouldn’t go 
on the proper finger. We laughed again at that; we were 


112 


A FAT GIRL’S LOVE STORY 


always laughing in those days. And he gave father one 
of the title deeds back, and stayed to dinner, and had a 
little music in the drawing-room afterward, and kissed 
Podge when he went away, at which Roddy and I and 
Belle nearly went into convulsions, and in a little time 
the wedding day was fixed. 

As it came near. Podge didn’t get any thinner. She 
ate her dinner just as usual, and smothered the children 
a good deal. She was to have half a dozen or so of them 
to live with her; she stipulated for that, and the Squire 
grinned and scowled and said, “All right, for the pres- 
ent!” He turned out to be quite generous, and tipped 
us sovereigns and Belle jewelry and new frocks, and she 
said every time she tried them on that she had quite 
come to regard him as a relative. Everybody had ex- 
cept Podge, and I dare say if you’d asked her she’d have 
said she was the person whose opinion mattered most. 
You never know how selfish unselfish people can be till 
they’re tried! It’s true the Squire was awfully ugly and 
as rough as a bear, and a little too fond of drinks that 
made his temper uncertain and his legs unsteady. But 
he had done a great deal for the family, and women can’t 
expect us men to be angels. 

Podge was a little too quiet as the wedding drew near. 
You know, there’s no fun in pinning a cockchafer that 
doesn’t spin round lively. The presents came in and the 
invitations went out, the breakfast was planned, the cake 
came from London, with heaps of other things; but she 
kept quiet. The night before the wedding it rained. 
Somebody wanted her for one of the thousand things 
people were always wanting her for, and she couldn’t be 
found. She stayed out so long that father sent word to 
the stablemen and gardeners to take torches and drag 
the pond. Of course, he was anxious, for you can’t have 


A FAT GIRL’S LOVE STORY 


113 


a wedding without a bride. But why the pond? A thin 
girl might have tried that without seeming ridiculous, 
but not a fat one, and Podge couldn’t have sunk if she’d 
tried ! She came in at last among us, looking very queer, 
and wet to the skin, with only a thin cloak on over her 
evening dress. She said she’d been to the churchyard, 
to mother’s grave, praying that we might be forgiven. 
She laughed the next moment, catching a glimpse of her 
own droll figure in the drawing-room glass. 

Next day was the wedding day. Everybody had new 
clothes, and the bridesmaids’ lockets had the initials of 
Podge and the Squire, and “R,” in diamonds. 

Roddy and I had pins to match — Hunt and Roskell’s. I 
forget how many yards of white satin went into Podge’s 
wedding gown, but it measured thirty-eight inches round 
the waist — no larks. She cried all the way going to 
church, so that father was nearly washed out of the 
brougham. 

How did the wedding go off? It never came off at all! 
There were the county people in the smart clothes 
they’d taken the shine off in London; there were the 
school children, with washed faces and clean pinafores, 
and baskets of rose leaves all ready to strew on the path 
of the happy pair. There were the decorations, palms 
and lilies, as if the occasion had been a kind of martyr’s 
festival; and there was the Bishop at the altar rails, 
with the Rector, waiting to tie the knot; and the Squire, 
in a blue frock coat, buff waistcoat, and shepherd’s plaid 
trousers, with a whole magnolia in his buttonhole, wait- 
ing for Podge. 

Father tried to lead her up the aisle, but it was too 
narrow, so he walked behind. Just as she put her foot 
on the chancel step, out comes old Noel out of the ves- 
try, to everybody’s surprise, looking flushed and excited. 


114 


A FAT GIRL’S LOVE STORY 


He said something I didn’t hear, and then Podge calls 
out, ^‘Oh, I can’t! Have mercy!” or something like that, 
and surged down with a flop, like the sound a big wave 
makes dashing into a cave’s mouth, on the red and white 
tiles. Old Noel ran to lift her up, but couldn’t do it. 

The Squire called out, “D you! Let my wife alone!” 

And the Bishop rebuked him for swearing in a sacred 
edifice. Then father and the Squire and old Noel hoisted 
Podge up — for two of ’em weren’t strong enough — and 
tottered with her into the vestry. 

What happened? I got in, and so I know all about it. 
We sprinkled Podge with water, and set fire to a feather 
duster and held it under her nose, and she came to, with 
her hair down, and her wreath and veil hanging by one 
hairpin. And old Noel bent over her, and said, ^‘Dearest 
Charlotte, there is no need for the sacrifice now!” And 
he pulled a newspaper out of his pocket and handed it 
to father, who said, ^‘What! what! how dare you, man?” 
and then dropped his eye on a paragraph marked in red 
ink, and said in the best Parksop manner, “I really beg 
your pardon. Sir Clement! Your uncle and his son both 
drowned yachting in the Mediterranean? Most deplora- 
ble ! but really affords you no excuse for — ah — interrupt- 
ing a solemn ceremony in so extraordinary a manner.” 
And then he and old — I mean Sir Clement Noel — had a 
few confidential words in a corner, and I heard old — I 
mean the Baronet — say, “On my word and honor, a 
sacred pledge!” And father astounded everybody by 
turning on the Squire, and telling him in the most gen- 
tlemanly way to go about his business, which he did, 
swearing awfully, while Podge was crying for joy, and 
Sir Noel comforting her with his arm round her waist — 
I mean as far as it would go. 

That happened three years ago, and Podge and Sir 


A FAT GIRL’S LOVE STORY 


115 


Clement Noel have been married three years all but a 
week. We all live with Podge and her, husband — I don’t 
think they’ve ever been alone together for a day since 
their honeymoon. Father is very fond of Charlotte now, 
and says the baby is a real Parksop. That always makes 
Sir Clement Noel wild — I can’t think why. 

I’ve often thought since, after seeing what they call a 
domestic drama, that what happened to Podge and Noel 
might have happened to the hero and heroine of one. 
Only, a hero never has gray hair and a stoop, and there 
never yet was a heroine who measured as much as thirty- 
eight inches round the waist. It’s impossible ! 


IN THE FOURTH DIMENSION 


T he balloon ascended from the Chiswick Gasworks at 
twelve-thirty, amid the thin cheers of an outer 
fringe of Works employes and an inner circle composed 
of members of the Imperial Air Club, who had motored 
down expressly for the start. It was by courtesy a sum- 
mer day, a June gale having blown itself out over night, 
a June frost having nipped vegetation over morn. Now 
there was not a breath of wind, and the sky vault arch- 
ing over London and the suburbs was of purplish-gray, 
through which a broad ray of white-hot sunshine pierced 
slantingly with weird effect as the order “Hands offP' 
was given, and the Beata^ of forty-five thousand cubic 
feet, owner Captain the Honorable H. Maudslay-Ber- 
rish, of the I. A. C., soared rapidly upward. 

Hitherto Maudslay-Berrish, occupied with the thou- 
sand cares devolving on the aeronaut, had not looked 
directly at either of his traveling companions. These 
were his wife’s friend and his wife. We all remember 
the sumptuous Miss Fennis, of the Hyperion and other 
West End comedy theaters. Many of the masculine 
readers of this truthful record have laid offerings of hot- 
house flowers, jewelry, sweetmeats, and settlements, at 
those high-arched insteps in their pre-nuptial days, and 
not all have had cause to mourn the rejection of the 
same. But Maudslay-Berrish, son of a philanthropic 
Nonconformist peer, to whom the theater is the ante- 
chamber to the Pit, married her, and, as too far south 
116 


IN THE FOURTH DIMENSION 117 


is north, the men of his set thenceforth tacked on “Poor 
chap!’^ or “Poor beggar!’’ to the mention of his name, 
when another stage triumph of his gifted wife, who did 
not resign her profession, was recorded in the newspa- 
pers. 

The friend of Mrs. Maudslay-Berrish, whom we may 
know as “Teddy,” gasped one or two private gasps as 
the Beata shot up to an altitude of three thousand feet, 
and Chiswick Gasworks fell away underneath her into a 
tinted relief map of West London, and then was buried 
under a sea of swirling dun-gray vapors. The hoot of a 
motor car — the needle-sharp screech of a railway loco- 
motive — were the last sounds to reach the ears of the 
Beata^s three passengers. Then the sounds of Earth sank 
into the silence of Eternity. And the soul of Mrs. 
Maudslay-Berrish’s friend felt very thin and small, 
knowing itself adrift upon that tideless sea. The wicker 
car seemed also small — small to unsafeness — and the 
ropes as frail as the strands of a spider web. Cautiously 
Teddy put forth his immaculately gloved hand and 
touched one. Madness, to have trusted limb and life 
to things like these. Madness, to have left the good 
sobd ground, where there were clubs and comfort and 
other meu to keep you from feeling alone — for Teddy 
realized with vivid clearness that in this particular mo- 
ment and at this particular point Mrs. Maudslay-Ber- 
rish counted for nothing. He even forgot to look to see 
if she was there. But she was there, and looking at him 
across her husband’s back. For Maudslay-Berrish was 
in the middle of the oblong basket, and he was leaning 
over, peering down into the swirling gray sea below, his 
folded arms upon the wicker car edge, his chin upon 
them. 

As matter of fact, he did not wish his wife and her 


118 IN THE FOURTH DIMENSION 


friend to see how heartily he was laughing. When you 
have set a trap for two beings w^hom you hate with an 
intensity beyond all the range of human expression, and 
waited patiently for years — it had taken him, Maudslay- 
Berrish, just three years to qualify as a member of the 
Air Club — to see them fall into it, you laugh when it 
happens. And if they chance to see your face while you 
are doing it, it makes them feel uncomfortable. . . . 
And when they know! . . . The purple veins swelled 
upon his narrow forehead under the leather peak of his 
Club cap. His muscles cracked, his shoulders heaved 
with that hidden, terrible, convulsive laughter. 

‘‘Harwood,^’ cried his wife, her strong voice ringing 
loud in the thin, untainted air, ^Vhat is the matter? Is 
anything wrong 

‘The balloon is not leaking, the valve is in proper or- 
der, there is plenty of ballast on board, the car is sound, 
the ropes are new and have been tested,^’ said Maudslay- 
Berrish. “There is scarcely a breath of wind to move us, 
and yet something is wrong. What are you trying to ask 
me. Beryl . . . whether we are in danger? At the risk 
of spoiling your evident enjoyment of your first ascent, 
I answer ‘Yes!’ ” 

Then he straightened his bowed figure and turned so as 
to face the wife who had betrayed him so often, and 
Teddy, her friend. She, Beryl, looked at him with wild 
eyes set in a face suddenly grown sharp and thin. She 
clenched her gloved left hand upon a rope of the car, 
and the splitting of the glove back revealed her wedding 
ring and its keeper of sparkling diamonds. At the sight 
of that consecrated symbol another gust of mad laugh- 
ter seized Maudslay-Berrish, and the tears poured down 
his purple face, and he roared and roared again, until 
every fiber of the car vibrated with his ugly merriment. 


IN THE FOURTH DIMENSION 119 


^Tor God’s sake, Berrish, don’t laugh like that!” 
shrieked Teddy, blue-white and gibbering. ^^Are you 
mad, or what?” 

“Were you sane, you infernal fool — you two infernal 
fools — when you got into this car with the man whom 
you have outraged?” shrieked Maudslay-Berrish. 
“Haven’t you dragged my good name in the mud, made 
me a by-word and a laughing-stock, a mockery even to 
myself — even to myself, in the last five years! Why, 

you d ” (he called Mrs. Maudslay-Berrish an 

unlovely name) “my very servants sneer at me, the peo- 
ple at the theater grin when I come loafin’ round behind 
the scenes. They’re quite aware of what I’ve swallowed 
without gaggin’. They know I’ve lived on your money 
when I’d got through my own, quite fly as to where most 
of it came from” — he pointed a shaking finger at the 
stricken Teddy — “and as downy as you pleased. Teddy, 
old chap, I’ve called that blue-gilled funker there, and 
half a dozen like him. Well, Teddy, old chap, say your 
prayers quick, for you’re going to die suddenly!” 

The woman and her lover knew now what their late 
dupe and butt meant to do. He had the ripping cord 
half-hitched about his left wrist — ^the ripping cord, a 
sharp tug at which will, when a balloon is dangerously 
dragged during a descent, take an entire panel out of the 
envelope in two seconds, immediately deflating the bag. 
And in his right hand Maudslay-Berrish manipulated a 
neat little revolver. 

Certainly he played the star part in the drama, and 
held the audience breathless. Half of the audience, that 
is, for Teddy, old chap, was at his prayers. Down on his 
knees at the bottom of the car, his gloved hands rigidly 
clasped, his handsome, weak face turned up to the sus- 
taining ball of gas that hovered in its imprisoning net 


120 IN THE FOURTH DIMENSION 


above, between him and the Illimitable Void, he cowered 
and slavered. In pleading for Heaven’s mercy upon a 
miserable sinner, he set forth that his Eve had tempted 
him; he asked for time to make up, another chance, a 
year, six months, a week only of sweet life. Hearing 
him, Eve herself grew sick with contempt of his infinite 
littleness, and even Maudslay-Berrish half turned away 
his eyes. 

‘‘Why don’t you pray?” he said, sneeringly, to his 
wife. “Why don’t you grovel like that thing you have 
kissed?” 

Miss Fennis, of the Hyperion, would have held an 
audience mute and breathless by the quiet scorn con- 
veyed in Mrs. Maudslay-Berrish’s look and tone. 

“I dare say when you have done what you are going 
to do, I shall wake up in Hell,” she said; “and I believe 
I shall have earned it!” 

Teddy, still spinning out the smeared records of his 
Past, was now prostrate and bathed in tears. 

“If I doubted the existence of such a place before, I do 
not now. For I have loved that man” — she bit her white 
under lip sharply — “and I have seen and heard him. 
Henceforth there can be nothing worse to bear, here or 
hereafter. Why do you delay? Pull the cord and have 

done with it, or I shall say you are afraid!” 

«*»**«« 

The Beata came sailing gently down upon a delightful 
green expanse of turf at Aldershot — the tennis ground, 
in fact, of a dandy Cavalry Regiment. The anchor 
dropped and caught in a pollard oak; a dozen delight- 
fully pink lieutenants in correct flannels assisted the 
handsome Miss Fennis, of the West-End theaters, to 
alight from the basket. Maudslay-Berrish, calm and 
imperturbable as usual, followed. In the midst of con- 


IN THE FOURTH DIMENSION 121 

gratulations and offers of luncheon, a lieutenant ex- 
claimed: 

'^Great Scott! Why didn’t you say you’d another pas- 
senger in the car? Here’s a man lying in a dead faint 
at the bottom of it!” 

And they brought out Teddy, very white and limp, 
and gave him brandy. 

“Heart weak, what?” said the lieutenant who had ex- 
claimed. 

“He has certainly had some — cardiac trouble,” re- 
turned Maudslay-Berrish placidly; “but I think he will 
be less liable to the — ahem! — the weakness after this 
little trip of ours together in the Fourth Dimension.” 

And he smiled as he lighted a very large cigar. 


THE GEWGAW 


T he iron doors of the auction room were closed 
tightly as the valves of an oyster shell; the for- 
ward rush of a smartly attired throng awaited their roll- 
ing back in the polished steel grooves. It was to be a 
woman’s field day; the contents of a notable jewel 
casket were to be dispersed under the hammer. And the 
bonne-mouche of the occasion — a superb blue diamond 
of sixty-five carats, a gem worthy to rank among the his- 
toric stones of the world, fit to be counted among the 
treasures of a Sultan or to blaze upon the bosom of an 
Empress — ^was discussed by watering mouths. Some of 
them were old and some of them were young, but all were 
tinted with the newest shade in lip bloom, and all wore 
the same expression of almost sensual desire. Paradise 
plumes fought together as wonderfully hatted heads 
bent and swayed and nodded in animated discussion. 
The stone had brought a hundred thousand louis and 
the Grand .Monarque’s own patent of nobility to the 
Portuguese adventurer who had stolen it from a Hindu 
temple midway in the seventeenth century. It had 
gleamed between the wicked, white breasts of the 
Duchesse de Berry, the shameless daughter of the Re- 
gent d ’Orleans, at that final supper on the Terrace of 
Meudon. It had been seized by the Revolutionists in 
the stormy days of 1792, and had mysteriously vanished 
from the Garde Meuble, to reappear in the taloned 
clutches of a London money lender and gem dealer, no- 
torious as a rogue among the spendthrift fine gentlemen 


THE GEWGAW 


123 


of White’s and Crockford’s. And it had been bought by 
a big banker, and bid for by a Tsar, and sold to a great 
Tory nobleman, and left as an heirloom, and given to an 
Italian opera singer, and got back by arbitration and 
made a ward in Chancery, and sold in Paris by sanction 
of the Court; and now the woman who had bought and 
owned and worn it — sometimes as the swinging central 
stone of a tiara, at other times as the pendant to a 
matchless collar of black pearls — was dead, and Bris- 
coe’s famous auction room, which is the chief clearing- 
place of the world, was about to witness a new record in 
progressive bidding. 

The live women who had known and envied the dead 
owner of the blue diamond clustered thick about the 
iron doors, and loaded the atmosphere of the crowded 
place with their perfumes, and chattered like the in- 
mates of the parrot house at the Zoological Gardens. 
Not one of them but would have given her soul in ex- 
change for even a lesser jewel if Satan had appeared at 
her elbow and suggested the. exchange. He did come to 
one of them. She was a pretty woman, still almost 
young; she was beautifully dressed in painted silken 
muslin, and wore a whole king bird of Paradise in her 
Paris hat. The bronze-gold wires of the wonderful tail, 
tipped with vivid emerald at the ends, curved and sprang 
about the wearer’s well-waved and well-dressed head like 
living snakes of incredible slenderness. The rich red 
plumage of the dead creature’s head and throat gleamed 
like rubies; the delicate feather tufts that sprang from 
beneath the wings quivered with her every movement; 
the orange bill held a seed, cunningly placed; the cobalt- 
blue legs were perched upon a rose stem. To insure such 
beauty in the plumage the skin must be torn from the 
living bird. Any woman might be happy in possessing 


124 


THE GEWGAW 


such a hat; but this one was miserable. . . . She wanted 
the big blue diamond. . . . And this urbane, polished 
person, elegantly attired, had told her that, if she chose, 
it might be hers in exchange for a possession only half 
believed in — to wit, the woman’s soul — disposed of to a 
personage held, until that psychological moment, to be 
non-existent. 

This was not the devil of St. Dunstan, with horns and 
a tail, or the cloaked and ribald wine seller of St. An- 
thony, or the lubberly fiend of Luther, or the clawed and 
scaly tempter of Bunyan. Nor did this personage bear 
the least resemblance to the swaggering, scarlet-and- 
black, sinister Mephistopheles of Goethe, as represented 
by the late Sir Henry Irving — upon whom be the Peace 
of Heaven! — but the woman entertained no doubt that 
it was the very devil himself. In this urbane and pol- 
ished gentleman in the light gray, tight-waisted frock- 
coat and trousers of Bond Street cut, from beneath 
whose snowy, polished double collar flowed a voluminous 
cascade of pearl-colored cravat pinned with a small but 
perfect pigeon’s-blood ruby; whose lapel bore a mauve 
orchid, whose immaculate white spats, perfectly polished 
patent boots, slender watch chain, jade-headed walking 
stick, and pale buff gloves, betokened the most studied 
refinement and the most elegant taste, the daughter of 
Eve recognized the hereditary enemy of the Human 
Race. 

She did not scream or turn ghastly with mortal 
fear; her Creme Magnolia and Rose Ninon were quite 
too thick for that. But her heart gave a sickening jolt, 
and fear immeasurable paralyzed her faculties, and her 
veins ran liquid ice — or was it liquid Are? — and for one 
swooning instant, under the regard of those intolerably 
mocking, unspeakably hateful eyes, the life in her 


THE GEWGAW 125 

seemed to dwindle to a mere pin’s point of consciousness. 
But she revived and rallied, and the terror passed. 

^‘Come!” he said, ^‘you do not fear me — we have been 
friends too long; and to me, who know the world so well, 
and to you, who know it and are of it, there is nothing so 
undesirable as to create a scene.” His voice was pol- 
ished, gracious. It caressed like the touch of velvet, even 
if it crisped the nerves as velvet does. ‘‘You know me. 
... I know you, and how your heart is set upon this 
jewel that is to be sold to-day. Rest easy! Though 
you have with you in that gold chain purse-bag notes for 
fifteen thousand pounds, ten thousand of it raised by 
what rigorous moralists . . . those unpleasant persons! 
. . . might call unlawful means . . .” 

^^Hush!” she cried, trembling, unable to remove her 
eyes from that face — long, oval, benevolent — with wide, 
arched brows and features exquisitely regular, framed in 
long waving hair — dark auburn mingled with gray — 
which fell nearly to his collar and mingled with a curling 
beard of natural growth. She trembled as the thought 
shot through her that it caricatured a Face that hung, 
pictured with a Crown of Thorns, above the cot in her 
child-daughter’s nursery; and her thought was mirrored 
in those intolerable eyes, and the sculpturesque lips 
smiled in impious mockery. 

^‘Ah, yes! It seems to you I bear some likeness to — 
shall I say a distant — or an estranged Friend of yours. 
. . . But I have many other faces, and you have . . . 
other friends. Do not be afraid, or waste time in deny- 
ing, the money is only borrowed; you are your young 
daughter’s mother, as well as trustee and executor under 
her father’s will. . . . And, surely, you may borrow the 
ten thousand pounds at a pinch for an investment? Be- 
sides, you will put it back before any unpleasant in- 


126 


THE GEWGAW 


quiries are made by your fellow-guardian and co-trustee. 
The manager of the Bank was quite deceived by the 
second signature upon the deed of withdrawal, so ad- 
mirably counterfeited, so . . . No, no, I do not wish to 
alarm you! Be quite at ease upon this matter, really so 
innocent and easily explained away. But with regard 
to your project of buying the Blue Diamond — ^you have 
no chance of carrying out your plan, not the faintest. 
Between those sedate persons already assembled by high 
privilege behind these shut iron doors an understanding 
has already been arrived at. The Diamond will be put 
up to public auction and actively bid for, it is true; but 
the Diamond is already bought and sold.” His tone was 
of the gentlest sympathy, but the mockery in his glance 
and the gibing irony of his dreadful smile were to the 
baffled woman like white-hot irons laid upon a bleeding 
wound. “Mr. Ulysses Wanklyn, whose great duel with 
Mr. Cupid Bose at the De Lirecourt sale over that Re- 
gence commode of marqueterie thrilled all London, will 
be the winner of the treasure at ninety-four thousand 
guineas. Paragraphs in the afternoon papers — most ex- 
cellent publications I find them, and supremely useful — 
will refer to the coup as ‘the climax of screeching 
finance,’ and ‘the hall-mark on an enhanced standard of 
jewel-values.’ And Messrs. Moreen and Blant, who will 
retire, ostensibly beaten, from the field after a bid of 
eighty-eight thousand, will be condoled with by writers 
who are quite aware that Wanklyn, Bose, Moreen, Blant, 
and half a dozen others constitute the Blue Diamond 
Purchasing Syndicate, capital ninety-four thousand 
guineas.” 

The wearer of the king bird of Paradise caught a sharp 
breath, and bit her sensuous, scarlet-dyed under-lip 
fiercely. Stung to desperate courage by baffled desire 


THE GEWGAW 


m 

and the thwarted jewel-lust that had robbed even her 
child and made of her a forger, she even dared to ques- 
tion. . . . 

^Tf that is so,^^ she said, with angry, dark eyes and a 
rebelliously-heaving bosom, ^Vhy did you whisper to me 
just now that I could have the Diamond for my own if I 
gave you ... as the people do in the old German 
legends . . . my Soul in exchange for it?’’ 

He smiled, and caressed the strange, orchidaceous 
flower he wore with perfectly-gloved fingers. 

^‘Have you not heard me called the Father of Lies . . . 
the Arch-Deceiver?” 

Rage intolerable possessed and rent her. She said 
hoarsely, and in tones unlike her own: 

^‘You can give me the Blue Diamond, and I will have 
it — at your price 

“You are really a woman of excellent sense,” he said — 
and she was afraid to look because she knew how he was 
smiling. “Present good for future gain! . . . Doubtless 
you will recall the quotation, but so uncertain a futurity 
is well bartered for such a jewel as they have in there. 
Think — ^you will snatch it from the great dealers — from 
the private connoisseurs. You will hold and display and 
flaunt it in the face of society. You will be beautiful — 
wearing it! You should be envied, wearing it! You may 
be happy — doubtless you will be so! And now, just as a 
mere form, prick your left wrist slightly with this 
diamond-pointed pencil and inscribe your name upon a 
leaf of these ebony tablets. First, though, be pleased 
to remove that . . . ahem! . . . miniature religious 
symbol from your golden chain. The Crucifix means 
nothing to you — ^you do not even remove it when you 
draw your wedded lover to your embrace — but I am an 
old-fashioned personage, and my prejudice extends back 


128 


THE GEWGAW 


over nineteen hundred years — to the reign of Herod An- 
tipas, and is practically unalterable. So . . . thanks! 
That will serve me excellently!’^ 

From the woman’s hand something fell with a golden 
tinkle to the parqueted floor. A surge of the crowd drove 
her forward, her French heel crushed what she had 
dropped. The diamond pencil pricked the white wrist 
between the buttons of her dainty glove; she withdrew 
it, a little scarlet bead glistening on the shining point, 
and hesitated, only an instant, looking at the offered 
tablets of ebony and gold. 

“Come, sign! ... It will be over in an instant, and, 
believe me, you will feel far more comfortable after- 
ward!” She remembered that her dentist had employed 
the same phrases only a day or two before in persuading 
her to consent to the removal of a decayed incisor. That 
tooth’s successor — a perfect, polished example of human 
ivory — gleamed as her lips drew back in a nervous laugh 
provoked by the absurdity of the analogy. She scrawled 
her signature, and the promise was fulfilled. She was 
calm — at ease — had no more worrying doubts and silly 
scruples. He wore no indiscreet expression of proprietor- 
ship; his lips did not even smile. And if there was 
mocking triumph in his eyes, his discreetly dropped lids 
concealed it. . . . He bowed profoundly as he took 
the ebony tablets, and then he lifted his gloved left hand 
and laid a finger on the iron doors. And they rolled 
apart, revealing the great safe with many patent locks, 
and the auctioneer at his desk, and the clerk at his ; and 
the chosen already in their seats, and the elaborate prep- 
arations for the elaborate farce that was to be played, 
all ready. A savage rage boiled up in her as she looked 
at the smug faces of the secret Syndicate, actors well- 
versed in their separate parts. But the pressure of the 


THE GEWGAW 


129 


chattering, screaming, perfumed crowd behind her carried 
her over the threshold, and her companion too. Packed 
tightly as sardines in the confined space about the ros- 
trum, Society waited the great event. And a bunch of 
master-keys was produced by the senior partner of 
Briscoe's, and with much juggling of patent locks the 
great safe gave up the big, square jewel-case containing 
the famous collection, and a sibilant of indrawn 

breaths greeted the lifting of its lid. 

'^Do not look at me! Listen — and look at the jewels," 
whispered the smooth, caressing voice in the ear of the 
woman who had just signed away her soul in exchange 
for the sensation of the day. And as a giant commis- 
sionaire bearing pearl ropes and tiaras, bracelets and 
rings and necklaces, nervously paraded up and down the 
central aisle left for his convenience, and the chattering 
and screaming of the society cockatoos redoubled, in 
envious admiration of each swaggering, glittering, covet- 
able gewgaw, the devil told the woman very plainly how 
the thing was to be done. 

^The stone that I shall give you is an exact replica in 
a newly-invented paste of the stone that is the price of 
what I have bought from you. When the commissionaire 
brings round the Blue Diamond, touch the jewel boldly 
— take it in your hand, as it is permissible to do — and 
substitute the paste. Have no fear! I will undertake 
that the act is undetected. Thenceforth wear your prize 
undismayed; boast of it as you will. The one — the only 
— drawback to your perfect happiness must be that so- 
ciety will believe your jewel to be false, while you have 
the exquisite joy of knowing it to be genuine. So take 
this, and act as I have counseled. Two hours to wait 
before you can dare to escape with it, for the Blue 
Diamond will be the last lot of the day. But what are 


130 


THE GEWGAW 


two hours, even spent in a vitiated atmosphere, with 
such a prize your own, hidden in your glove or in your 
hand? A mere nothing! And here comes the commis- 
sionaire with the Diamond. . . . Only an alumina in 
hexagonal arrangement crystallized in the cooling of this 
planet you call ‘the World’ as arrogantly as though there 
were no others, and yet how unique, how exquisite I See 
how the violet rays leap from the facets, even the noblest 
sapphire looks cold and pale beside the glorious gem. 
Murder has been committed for its shining sake over 
and over again in ages of which your history has no 
cognizance. It has purchased the faith of Emperors and 
the oaths of Kings. Rivers of blood have flowed because 
of it. Peerless women have laid down their honor to gain 
it. And it will be yours . . . yours! Quick, the com- 
missionaire is coming. School your hand to steadiness; 
no need to hide your lust, for all faces wear the same 
look here. Only be quick, and have no fear!” 

The eyes of the commissionaire were fastened upon the 
woman’s white, ringed, well-manicured hand, as in its 
turn it lifted the Blue Diamond — slightly set in platinum 
as a pendant — from its pale green velvet bed. But yet 
she effected the exchange. The substituted paste jewel 
was borne on — the paroquets and cockatoos chattered 
and screamed as loudly over the false stone as they had 
over the real, which lay snugly hidden in the thief’s fair 
bosom. The syndicate of dealers played out their farce 
to its end, and Mr. Ulysses Wanklyn, to the infinite 
chagrin of Mr. Cupid Bose, and the gnashing discom- 
fiture of Messrs. Moreen and Blant, secured the paste 
diamond at ninety-four thousand pounds. And amidst 
cries and congratulations the day ended. And the 
woman, with her price in her bosom, escaped into the 
open air, and signaled to the chauffeur waiting with her 


THE GEWGAW 


131 


motor-brougham and drove home. Fear and triumph 
filled her. When would the theft be discovered? How 
soon would voices in the streets begin to clamor of 
the stolen gem? How should she who had stolen it ever 
dare to wear or to vaunt it, with Scotland Yard — with 
the detective eyes of all the world upon her? She had 
been befooled, duped, defrauded; she moaned as she bit 
her lace handkerchief through. . . . She reached her 
dainty boudoir just in time to have hysterics behind its 
locked and bolted doors. And when she had quieted 
herself with ether and red lavender, she drew the Blue 
Diamond from its hiding-place, and it gleamed in her 
palm with a diabolical splendor, as though the stone 
were sentient, and knew what it had cost. Could the 
great dealers be deceived — a probability quite impossi- 
ble — she would be at liberty to wear this joy, this glory, 
to see its myriad splendors reflected in envious eyes. She 
kissed it as she had never kissed her child or any of her 
lovers — ^with passion, until its sharp facets cut her lips. 
And, as she kissed it, her quick ears were alert to catch 
the shoutings of the newsmen in the streets. But there 
were none. She dined in her boudoir, and slept, with the 
aid of veronal; and in the morning’s newspaper there 
was not a wail, not a word! She gave the king-bird of 
Paradise hat to her maid — she was so pleased, so thank- 
ful! The afternoon papers, and those of the next day 
and the next, were dumb upon the subject of the daring 
theft of the big Blue Diamond from Briscoe’s famous 
auction-room. She grew more and more secure. And 
one never-to-be-forgotten night she put on a Paquin 
gown and went to a great reception at a ducal house 
with the Blue Diamond as pendant to her pearl-and- 
brilliant collar. She counted on the cockatoos screech- 
ing, but they did not screech. The eyes that dwelt on the 


1S2 


THE GEWGAW 


Blue Diamond were astonished, surprised, covertly 
amused, contemptuous. 

“That is for luck, I suppose, dear?’' cooed one of her 
intimate friends. “I mean that large blue crystal you 
are wearing. ... I bought some last winter at a jew- 
eler’s in the bazaar at Rangoon — they find them with 
moonstones and olivines and those other things in the 
debris at the Ruby Mines, I understood. I must have 

mine mounted. By the way, do you know that ” 

(she mentioned the name of a great financier of cos- 
mopolitan habits and international fame) “has bought 
the Blue Diamond from Ulysses Wanklyn for a hundred 
and ten thousand pounds: — her voice dropped a 

little as she referred to a lady upon whom the great 
financier was reputed to have bestowed his plutocratic 
affections — “will be here to-night. Probably she will 
wear it ! They say she was absolutely determined on his 
getting it for her, and so . . . A porte basse, passant 
courbe, especially when the circumstances are pretty. 
What do you say? You heard it had been discovered 
by the dealers that the Blue Diamond had been found 
to be false ... a paste imitation, or a cut crystal like 
that thing you are wearing? Oh, my dear, how quite too 
frightfully absurd a canard! As though Ulysses Wan- 
klyn and Cupid Bose and Blant, and all the other con- 
noisseurs, could be deceived! What a very remarkable- 
looking man that is who is bowing to you! . . . The 
graceful person with the Apostolic profile and the beauti- 
ful silky beard” — and the intimate friend gave a little 
shudder. “And the extraordinary eyes that give one a 
crispation of the nerves? ...” 

It w^as he — her Purchaser — moving suddenly toward 
her through the throng of naked backs and bare bosoms. 

“I hope,” he said, and bowed and smiled, “that you 


THE GEWGAW 


133 


are satisfied with the result of our . . . negotiations the 
other day?” Then, as the fashionable crowd parted and 
the Great Financier walked through the rooms, his im- 
perious mistress upon his arm, her husband looking ami- 
able behind them, he added, indicating the swinging 
central pendant of the lady’s superb diamond tiara, with 
a wave of a slender white-gloved hand, “My substitute 
was convincing, you think; you suppose it has deceived 
even the experts? Not in the least — the substitution of 
the paste stone for the Blue Diamond was discovered 
as soon as the public had quitted the auction-room. But 
Messrs. Wanklyn and Bose and my other very good 
friends who lay down the law in jewels as in other things, 
to Society, agreed not to lose by the fraud. The paste 
has the cachet of their approval, and has been sold for a 
great sum. ‘What water!’ the world is crying. ‘What 
luster!’ ‘How superb a gem!’ While you, my poor 
friend, who display upon your bosom the real stone, have 
merely been credited with a meretricious taste for wear- 
ing Palais Royal jewelry. Pardon! I have not deceived 
you — or not in the way you imagine. ... I said the 
Blue Diamond should be yours. ... It is! I said you 
should be envied; you should, certainly. It is a thousand 
pities you are only sneered at. I said you might be 
happy. ... It is most regrettable that you do not find 
the happiness you looked for. Au revoir, dear lady, 
au revoir r 

She felt indisposed, and went home. . . . 


THE NIGHT OF POWER 


In Two Parts 

I 

T he Doctor, stepping softly forth from the sick- 
room, paused for a brief confidential parley with 
the print-gowned, white-capped hospital nurse, who had 
followed him. That functionary, gliding from his side, 
evanished, with the falling of a curtain-sheet soaked in 
disinfectant and the closing of a door, into the Blue- 
Beard chamber beyond, leaving the man of medicine 
free to pursue his portly way downstairs. 

At the bottom of the second flight one of the hotel ser- 
vants stopped him with a respectful murmur and a salver 
with a card upon it; and the Doctor, reading the name 
thereon by the help of a pair of gold-rimmed glasses, 
inclined his neatly-shaved, gray-blue chin toward the 
mourning diamond discreetly twinkling amid the bil- 
lows of black satin that rolled into the bosom of his 
capacious waistcoat, saying: 

“The wife of my patient upstairs? Certainly; I will 
see the lady at once. Which way?” 

His responsible, square-toed, patent-leather boots had 
not much farther to carry him. The lady and her maid 
were waiting in a sitting-room upon the next landing. 
Under the fashionable physician's heavy yellow eyelids 
— livery eyelids, if one might dare to hint so — lay the 
134 


THE NIGHT OF POWER 


135 


faculty of keen observation. He noticed, in the moment 
of recovery from a justly-celebrated bow, that the maid 
was in tears, and the mistress was not. 

He presupposed that he had the pleasure of addressing 
Mrs. Rosval. Mrs. Rosval answered that he had. Then 
the maid uttered a sob like the popping of a soda-water 
cork, and Mrs. Rosval said: 

^‘Matilda, be quiet 

She was a woman of supple figure and of medium 
height. She appeared to be elegantly dressed, though 
no one garment that she wore asserted itself as having 
been expensive. The eyes that looked at the Doctor 
through her thick black veil struck him as being un- 
naturally brilliant. This fact, together with the compos- 
ure of her voice and manner, confirmed him in the belief 
that the woman was in a highly-strung condition of 
emotional excitement. He was mentally evolving a little 
prescription — with bromide in it, to be taken every three 
hours — when she lifted her hands and unpinned the veil. 
Then the Doctor looked in the face of a woman who was 
as perfectly calm, cool, and composed as he was himself. 
Even more so because the revelation rather surprised 
him. 

She addressed him in clear, quiet tones: 

“A telegraphic message was delivered to me this morn- 
ing '' 

^^At Mirkwood Park, near Bradford,’^ the Doctor un- 
consciously quoted aloud from the card he still held be- 
tween his plump white thumb and forefinger. 

^Tt purported to come from the proprietor of this 
hotel. It said that Mr. — that my husband was danger- 
ously ill — that my presence was urgently needed.” Mrs. 
Rosval’s lips — delicately chiseled lips, but totally devoid 
of color— shaped themselves into something that might 


136 


THE NIGHT OF POWER 


have been a smile. And as the maid, who nursed a 
dressing-bag in the background, at this juncture emitted 
a sniff, the mistress glanced again over her shoulder, and 
said, with a slight accent of weariness or contempt, or 
both together: ^‘Really, Matilda, there is no need for 
that!'^ 

The irrefragable Doctor had gauged the shallow depths 
of the woman’s nature by this time. She was merely a 
polished and singularly adamantine specimen of the un- 
feeling wife. He allowed a tinge of rebuke to color the 
tone of his explanation. 

^‘The proprietor acted upon my — ah — advice. The 
condition of my patient may be truthfully described as — 
er — dangerous. The illness is — in fact — ^typhoid fever. 
And your husband has it in a bad form. There are com- 
plications which ” 

The Doctor stopped short. For Mrs. Rosval was not 
listening. She was crumpling a piece of pinkish paper 
into a ball — probably the telegram to which she had 
alluded — and pondering. Then she leveled those strangely 
brilliant, narrow-lidded eyes of hers pointblank at the 
Doctor, and asked: “Am I to understand that Mr. Ros- 
val has nothing to do with — ^my being sent for?” 

The Doctor conveyed the information that Mr. Rosval 
had not prompted the step. Mr. Rosval had been — since 
the third day following on the — ah — development of the 
illness — ringing the changes between delirium and — ah — 
coma. For — as the Doctor had already said — there were 
complications 

Mrs. Rosval neatly stopped the ball, for the second 
time. 

“How did you know, if he did not tell you, that there 
was a Mrs. Rosval? How did you get at my address?” 

The Doctor, swelling with the indignity of being sup- 


THE NIGHT OF POWER 


137 


posed to have got at anybody’s address, explained that 
the proprietor of the hotel, having some faint inkling 
that Mr. Rosval belonged to the class of landed gentle- 
man, had looked up the name in Burke. 

The sharp suspicion faded out of Mrs. Rosval’s eyes as 
she listened. It was a perfectly credible, perfectly simple 
explanation. She tossed the crumpled telegram into the 
fire — which devoured it at a gulp — and began to pull off 
her gloves. That was her way of intimating that she 
accepted the situation. Then she rang the bell. The 
decorous waiter appeared, and she gave the man a quiet 
order, handing him some loose silver and a slip of paper, 
upon which she had penciled a few words. 

cab is waiting at the door. Pay the driver and 
send him away. A person who is — not quite a gentle- 
man — is waiting in the vestibule. Say to him that Mrs. 
Rosval is satisfied, and there is no need to wait. Give 
him that paper at the same moment, or he will not be- 
lieve you!” As the waiter vanished she turned to the 
Doctor with the faintest flicker of a smile upon her sensi- 
tive pale lips. ‘T thought it wisest to keep the cab, in 
case I required to leave this place hurriedly,” said Mrs. 
Rosval. “The man waiting downstairs is a detective 
from a well-known Agency. I judged it best to enlist 
his services — he would have proved useful supposing this 
business of the telegram to have been a Trap.” 

The Doctor spread his large white hands, danglingly, 
like a seal’s flappers. 

“A trap?” he repeated, helplessly. “My dear madam! 
You suspected that some designing person or persons un- 
known might — possibly use your husband’s name, invent 
a story of his illness as a ruse to — entrap you?” 

“I suspected,” returned Mrs. Rosval, “no unknown 
person. The inventor of the ruse would have been my 


138 


THE NIGHT OF POWER 


husband. We separated some years ago by mutual con- 
sent. At least, I refused to live with him any longer, 
and he — knowing what grounds I had for the refusal — 
was obliged to submit. But he resented my action in the 
matter.” Mrs. Rosval raised her delicate dark eyebrows 
with weary disdain, and imparted to her shoulders a 
mute eloquence of contempt which is not the prerogative 
of an English-bred woman. ^‘And he has, more than 
once, had recourse to what, for want of a better word, 
I call Traps. That is all. Matilda,” she addressed the 
tearful maid, “dry your eyes and tell the people down- 
stairs that I engage this suite of rooms. Two bedrooms, 
a bathroom, and sitting-room at ten guineas a week, I 
think they said? Horribly expensive, but it cannot be 
helped. And now. Doctor” — she turned again to the 
Doctor — “when do you wish me to see your patient? At 
once? It shall be at once if you say so! I am com- 
pletely in your hands!” 

The Doctor, a little staggered by the deftness of his 
patient’s wife in transferring the onus of the situation 
from her shoulders to his own, absolutely prohibited any 
suggestion of her entering the sick-room until refreshed 
and rested. Mrs. Rosval acquiesced, '^ith a repetition of 
that compromising statement about being completely in 
his hands — and the Doctor took his leave, promising to 
return later that evening. She gave him her cool fingers, 
and they parted. He had no sooner reached the door 
than she called him back. 

“I only wanted to ask Of course, you have a 

library. Does the catalogue of your library include a 
file of the Daily Telegraphf^^ It did, the Doctor ad- 
mitted. File in question extending some twelve years 
back. 

“Three will dp,” said Mrs. Rosval, warming one slen- 


THE NIGHT OF POWER 


139 


der arched foot upon the fender. ^^Next time you are in 
want of a little light reading, look in the Law Intelli- 
gence, Divorce Division, month of February, 1899, where 
you will find a case: 'Ffrench v. Ffrench; Rosval cited.’ 
The details will explain a good deal that may appear 
puzzling to you with regard to the strained relations be- 
tween Mr. Rosval and myself. Though doctors never 
allow themselves to be puzzled, do they? Au revoirr 


II 

The Doctor had had an unusually busy day of it. But 
he curtailed his after-dinner nap in order to glance 
through the Law Intelligence records of the month of 
February, 1899. There was much in the case to which 
Mrs. Rosval had referred that went far toward justify- 
ing the ^^strained relations” she had hinted at. And it is 
the duty of the medical profession to rally at the war-cry 
of the outraged Proprieties. But, when alone and un- 
observed, doctors have many points in common with 
mere men. And as this Doctor stepped into his brougham 
he said, ^ Women are very hard! In all human proba- 
bility the man was innocent.” He said again, Women 
are hard!” as he creaked up the hotel staircase. 

He found her in the sick-room. She had changed her 
dress for something that gave out no assertive silken 
rustle in answer to her movements, something that draped 
the charming contour of her figure — she had a charming 
figure — with soft, quiet folds, like the wings of a dun 
hawkmoth. That fell composure still walled her in as 
with ramparts of steel. She held the bed-curtain back 
as the Doctor stooped over the livid, discolored face upon 
the pillow. She took a linen cloth from the nurse, and 


140 


THE NIGHT OF POWER 


deftly, lightly wiped away the froth and mucus that had 
gathered about the cracked and bleeding lips. But the 
hand that rendered these offices was as steady as though 
it had been carved out of white marble. 

Disturbed from his lethargy by the invasion of candle- 
light upon his haggard eyelids and the Doctor's bass 
murmur in his ear, the sick man began to talk a little. 
For the most part it was mere gabble, but some sentences 
were plain. He moaned piteously for a barber, because 
he was unshaven. Rosval had always been foolishly vain 
of his personal appearance. And he damned the one 
glass of bad water, to the imbibition of which he at- 
tributed his disease, promising, if he got well, never to 
drink any more. To do him credit, he had never been 
addicted to that particular form of liquid refreshment. 
The Doctor inferred as much from his diagnosis — and 
from the faint sarcastic quiver of Mrs. Rosval’s white 
lips. Then the tongue of the man ceased wagging — but 
the burning head began to thresh to and fro upon the 
pillow, and the claw-like hands to scratch at the bed- 
clothes in a fresh access of the maddening enteric irrita- 
tion. Alleviating measures proved as effective as allevi- 
ating measures generally do prove; the head went on 
rolling, and the crooked talons continued to tear. All 
at once they were quiet. Mrs. Rosval had laid her hand 
upon the clammy forehead — about as tenderly, to all 
appearance, as she would have laid it upon the back of 
a chair. And the man was still. She placed the other 
hand beside the first — the drawn lines about the nostrils 
relaxed, the clenched teeth parted, the breast rose and 
fell with the indrawing and outgoing of a sigh of relief. 
And the man slept. So soundly that she moved from 
him presently, without disturbing him, and passed into 


THE NIGHT OF POWER 141 

the room adjoining, where the Doctor and the nurse were 
holding a whispered confabulation. 

There would be no need to send in another professional 
attendant, the nurse said, now that the patient’s wife 
had arrived. She possessed a remarkable ability for 
nursing, and extraordinary self-command. She shrank 
from nothing — not even the most repugnant duties of 
the sick-chamber. The nurse had met in her time with 
ladies who took things coolly; but this lady really sur- 
prised her. 

The Doctor was in the act of shaking his head — not 
from side to side, but up and down — a gesture which ex- 
pressed indulgent tolerance of the nurse’s surprise while 
it repudiated the notion of his entertaining any on his 
own account — when he jumped. For a calm, quiet voice 
at his elbow said: 

^‘You told me that Mr. Rosval was dangerously ill. 
Is he dying?” 

The nurse had vanished into the carbolic-laden atmos- 
phere of the Chamber of Horrors. 

^‘My dear madam, your husband is in the Hands ” 

So the Doctor was beginning, when the obvious inappro- 
priateness of the stereotyped formula stopped him short. 
Then he admitted that the condition of the man in the 
other room was very precarious. That he could not, 
when not in articulo mortis, be said to be dying — but 
that, toward the small hours of the morning, he might 
attain to a pitch of prostration closely allied to that con- 
dition. And that nothing could be done for him but to 

give him milk and medicine regularly, and The 

Doctor would have ended ^‘and trust in Providence,” but 
for obvious reasons he thought better of it. Then he 
went away, feeling quite certain in his own mind that 


142 THE NIGHT OF POWER 

Mrs. Rosval would be a widow before twenty-four hours 
were over. 

That lady, meanwhile, returning to the sick-room, had 
persuaded the fagged nurse to go and lie down. She 
understood how to do all that was necessary, she whis- 
pered, and would call the attendant if any change oc- 
curred. Then she sat down at the foot of the bed, and 
prepared to keep her vigil with unshaken fortitude. The 
sleeping woman in the next room breathed heavily, the 
sounds of rolling wheels and jarring voices grew less and 
less — then all fell quiet. About three hours before the 
dawn the sleeper awakened. The hollow eyes no longer 
turned on her with the blind, glassy stare of delirium. 
There was reason in RosvaPs look, and memory. 

He seemed to beckon, and she came near. She had to 
stoop to catch the moaning whisper that asked: “How 
— did you — come here?” 

She answered steadily, “They sent for me.” 

“They’d not have — if I had known!” Rosval gasped. 

“If I annoy you,” said Mrs. Rosval, with icy toler- 
ance, “I can go!” She turned, meaning to call the nurse; 
but a claw-like hand went weakly out and caught at her 
skirts. The grasp was no stronger than that of a new- 
born child, but, just for that it was so feeble, it held her. 

“You’ll not go! Three years — you’ve treated me — 
like a leper! Never would — listen to what I’d got to 
say. But now . . . I — tell you, she — sat on — my knee 
and — kissed me! Before I knew it — and then — the hus- 
band came in! A plant, by Gad!” 

Mrs. Rosval said, “You must not talk. The Doctor 
says you are not to talk,” and busied herself with the 
bottles and glasses that occupied a little stand near the 
bedside. 

Rosval condemned the Doctor. Mrs. Rosval measured 


THE NIGHT OF POWER 


145 


out his medicine, raised his head with professional skill, 
and offered him the glass. He clenched his teeth, and 
defied her with gaunt eyes across the brim. 

‘‘No! No milk — no doctor’s stuff. IVe been going to 
the devil — for three years past,” proclaimed the sinner, 
feebly. “Why not go — at once — and have done with it?” 
Then he fell back heavily on the pillow. 

Mrs. Rosval summoned the nurse. The nurse could do 
nothing. For the moribund was obdurate, and every 
fresh manifestation of obduracy drove not one, but half a 
gross of nails into his coffin. That casket was fast pro- 
gressing toward completion, when Mrs. Rosval conceived 
a desperate idea. The execution of it cost her a severe 
struggle. Stooping down, she whispered to the sinking 
man: 

“Jack!” 

His faded eyes rolled in their sunken sockets until they 
rested on her. He said with difficulty: 

“Well?” 

“What will make you take it?” 

Something like a gleam of cunning came into the face. 
The answer came: 

“Kiss me!” 

She battled with herself for a moment silently, and 
then, bending closer, touched his forehead with her lips. 

“That isn’t all! You must say: ‘7 forgive youF 

“I can’t!” 

“All — right, then!” 

Silence ensued. The angles of the features were grow- 
ing pinched and sharp; a bluish shade was creeping 
about the mouth. She cast a glance of scorn at her own 
reflection, caught in a mirror that hung against the op- 
posite wall, and said the words: 

“I forgive you! Isn’t that enough?” 


144 


THE NIGHT OF POWER 


^'Not quite. T love you — and ^ 

The voice was getting very faint, 
love you — dear — and ” 

“And 7 take you back!’ ” 

“I take you back.” Her iron fortitude was broken. 
She said it with a sob, and gathered the weak head to 
her bosom, being the kind of woman who does not do 
things by halves. 

♦ •»*** 

A month later the Doctor received a check. It was a 
handsome check, enclosed with the thanks and compli- 
ments of Mr. and Mrs. Rosval, on leaving London. 

“Carried him off with her into the country,” said the 
Doctor, tapping his teeth with a paper-knife as he closed 
the volume of the Daily Telegraph which contained the 
case “Ffrench v. Ffrench; Rosval cited.” “In other 
words, taken him back. And in all human probability 
the man was guilty. Women are very weak!” 


THE MAN WHO COULD MANAGE 
WOMEN 


O R thought he could. Which comes to the same 
thing. His name was Yethill, and he was a Junior 
Captain in the R. A. 

Yethill belonged to the New School; he was a speci- 
men of the latest military development of the age. By 
their smoked spectacles shall ye know Yethill and his 
peers ; by the right foot, which is broadened by the lathe ; 
by the right thumb, which is yellowed with acids and 
sticky with collodion; by the hard-bitten, pragmatical, 
theoretical, didactic way of treating all mysteries in 
heaven — a locality which is interesting only in virtue of 
the opportunities afforded to trick aviators — and earth, 
in which mines may be dug, and upon which experi- 
ments may be carried on. These men wake themselves 
in the morning, and heat their shaving water by means 
of electrical machines of their own invention. They 
carry kodaks in their bosoms, and are, in the matter of 
imparting information, human volcanoes continually in 
eruption. 

Yethill was not behind his fellows in this respect. 
When he had said his little say upon the Theory of Wire- 
less Photophony, the Detection of Subterranean Mines 
by the K Rays, and the irresponsibility of the bedbug 
in connection with beri-beri ; when he had told the Head 
of the Electrical Department how many watts are equiv- 
alent to a horse-power, and explained to the Colonel, 
who is sinfully proud of his men, that the employment 
145 


146 THE MAN WHO COULD MANAGE WOMEN 


of the uneducated inferior in warfare will cease with the 
century, and that the army of the future will consist 
entirely of officers, he would drop his voice to a confi- 
dential whisper and control his elbows. He talked helio- 
graphically as a rule, and if a man were left to listen to 
him — he could, as a rule, clear the Mess smoking-room 
in ten minutes from the start — he would dilate at length 
upon his best-loved hobby, the art of managing women. 

Yethill was no Adonis. He had a knobby, argumenta- 
tive head, a harlequin set of features, each separate one 
belonging to a different order and period of facial archi- 
tecture; and a figure which was not calculated, as his 
tailor observed with bitterness, to do justice to a good 
cut. But it was wonderful to hear him talk in that con- 
quering, masterful way of his. He had an appalling 
array of statistics to prove that the majority of mar- 
riages were miserable; that life, connubially speaking, 
was dust and ashes in the mouths of nineteen Benedicts 
out of twenty. But the darkest hour presaged the dawn. 
Let the man about to marry, let the already-married, 
but adopt the Yethill system of sweetheart-and-wife 
breaking, and thenceforth all would be well. And thou- 
sands of voices arising from the uttermost ends of the 
civilized earth would hail with one accord Yethill as 
their deliverer. 

Then came an essay on the New Art of Courtship. 

“To a man,” Yethill would say, jerking his knee and 
stammering a little, as his custom was when excited, 
“who is a reasonable being, the woman he loves is a 
woman — only spelt with a big ‘W’; the woman he likes 
is a woman spelt in the ordinary way; and the woman 
he doesn’t like is a mere creature of the female sex. To 
a woman,” Yethill would continue, “who is, nineteen 


THE MAN WHO COULD MANAGE WOMEN 147 


times out of twenty, a perfectly unreasonable being; — 
the man she loves is a demi-god; the man she doesn’t 
love is a man; — and the man she dislikes is a gorilla. 
She quite overlooks the fact that in every individual 
human male these three may be found united. And man 
is weak enough to humor her. So that out of so many 
marriages that take place, a majority — a frightful ma- 
jority — are founded upon illusions. And the subsequent 
state of conjugality may be called a state of evolution, 
in which these primary illusions, after undergoing a 
process of disarrangement and disintegration, are finally 
reduced to impalpable powder, and the Bed Rock of 
Reality is laid bare. We know what happens after that!” 

The listening man generally knew enough to grunt an 
affirmative. And Yethill would, with many weird facial 
jerks and twitches, go on to explain the system. 

The great system was, like all other wonderful dis- 
coveries, involved in a very simple plan of procedure. It 
consisted only in reversing the accepted order of things. 
A man, supposedly desirous of getting married, recogniz- 
ing in himself the existence of the trinity above men- 
tioned, should assert the existence of the third person 
from the very outset — suppress the demi-god, show the 
gorilla. Let the woman you were about to make your 
wife see the worst of you before you showed her the 
best. Let her pass through the burning fiery furnace 
before you admitted her into the Paradise that is the 
reward of proved devotion. Let her know what bullying 
meant before you took to petting — blame her weaknesses 
before you praised her virtues. Under this regime there 
would be no illusions to commence with; and married 
life, instead of being full of disappointments, would be 
replete with delightful surprises. Your wife married you, 
believing you to be a gorilla. 


148 THE MAN WHO COULD MANAGE WOMEN 


^‘There’s the weak point,” the listener would inter- 
polate. “What woman, unless a lunatic of sorts, would 
marry a gorilla?” 

Yethill would not hear of this objection. He was al- 
ways deaf when you came to it. He would pound on — 
dilate on the surprise and joy with which she found that 
she had married a man, and the rapture with which she 
would greet the final discovery that she had got hold of 
a demi-god. 

“It sounds splendid,” the other men would say, “but 
it won’t wash. Look here, I’m going to take Miss So- 
and-So up to a Gaiety matinee to-morrow. To follow 
up your system I ought to call for her in my worst 
clothes, be surly on the way to the station, and neglect- 
ful in the tunnels. I ought to dump her into her stall 
like a sack, go out to ‘see a man’ between every act, and 
take it for granted that she doesn’t want cool tea and 
warm ices. You know that’d never do! She’d give me 
the bag to-morrow. And she’d be right!” 

But Yethill hearkened not. There was excitement at 
the Arsenal, and much babbling in barracks, the day on 
which it was publicly made known that Yethill contem- 
plated giving an object-lesson in support of his great 
system very shortly. 

The object was Miss Sallis. 

Miss Sallis was a fiuffy little pink- and- white girl, the 
daughter of a retired Admiral, who lived near the Dock- 
yard. 

Men had dined with Miss Sallis, and played tennis 
with Miss Sallis, and fiirted with Miss Sallis, during 
several seasons past. Some of them had asked for her 
hand — she wore fives in gloves — and had not got it. 
Thus, Yethill’s announcement was received with a cer- 
tain degree of risibility. No bets were made upon the 


THE MAN WHO COULD MANAGE WOMEN 149 


chances of Yethill’s getting her, the odds against his ac- 
ceptance were too tremendous. Yethill proposed. He 
mentioned that his prospects of advancement in the 
Service were not very promising; that his scientific pur- 
suits would have to be relinquished if he were to set up 
an establishment on even a moderate scale, and that he 
did not intend to relinquish those pursuits; that there 
were several hereditary diseases in his family; that, 
while bestowing upon the lady he honored with the offer 
of his hand a regard which justified his proposal, he 
should not have made that proposal had the lady been 
poor — with other statements of equal candor. A more 
wonderful proposal was never made. 

What was more wonderful still. Miss Sallis accepted 
him! He bought her a ring, containing three small frag- 
ments of petrified red-currant jelly, embedded in fifteen- 
carat gold; and when she asked him to put it on her 
finger said, ‘^Oh, rot!’’ and wouldn’t. He spent a certain 
amount of time with his betrothed, but invariably car- 
ried a scientific work in his pocket, wherein he might 
openly take refuge when the primrose paths of love 
proved wearisome. He forbade her to dance with other 
men, and did not dance with her himself. He snubbed 
her when she asked questions about his camera, his lathe, 
his batteries, and tried timidly to be interested in mag- 
nets and inductors, acids and cells, because they inter- 
ested him. He carried out his system thoroughly. If 
Miss Sallis had any illusions about Yethill he bowled 
the poor little thing over, right and left, like ninepins, 
long before the wedding-day. 

With the loss of her illusions went some of her good 
looks. She made a pretty-looking little bride. With her 
fluffy pale hair, her pink nose, and her pink eyelids, a 
not remote resemblance to an Angora kitten was traced 


150 THE MAN WHO COULD MANAGE WOMEN 


in her. She was married in a traveling-gown, without 
any bridesmaids; and after the wedding-breakfast Cap- 
tain and Mrs. Yethill drove home to their lodgings on 
the Common. The wedding-trip had been abandoned — 
from no lack of money, but because Yethill said he had 
had enough of traveling, and the custom of carrying a 
bride away, as if in triumph, to the accompaniment of 
rice and slippers, was “guff.” He certainly played the 
gorilla as if to the manner born. The poor little woman 
loved him; he loved her. But as his skull was made of 
seven-inch armor-plate, he went on knocking it against 
his system. He had got used to the gorilla-business, and 
couldn’t leave it off. Yet, out of his wife’s sight and 
hearing, he was a doting husband. The Duke in the 
Story of Patient Griseldis must have been a man of Yet- 
hill’s stamp. 

Mrs. Yethill, as time went on, began to be a walking 
manifestation of the effects of the system. She lost her 
gaiety and her pink cheeks; her smile became nervous 
and her dress dowdy. The little vanities, the little weak- 
nesses, the little affectations, which had helped to make 
Miss Sallis charming, had been bullied out of Mrs. Yet- ^ 
hill’s character until it was as destitute of any blade of 
verdure as a skating-rink. She had proved herself the 
most patient, loving, tolerant of wives; but Yethill went 
on trying her. She stood the trials, and he invented new 
tests — exactly as if she had been a Government bayonet 
or a regulation sword-blade. A bright man Yethill I 

They were called upon, and returned visits, at inter- 
vals. A taste for society was one of the tendencies which 
were to be chastened. Female friends were prohibited, 
as being likely to sow the seed of incipient rebellion 
against the system. 

“I don’t care, Tom, if I have you!” said Mrs. Yethill, 


THE MAN WHO COULD MANAGE WOMEN 151 


patting her gorilla, who, mindful of his own tenets, was 
careful not to exhibit any appreciation of her attention. 
But he made up for it by boasting that evening in the 
smoking-room, until those who hearkened with difficulty 
prevented themselves from braining him with legs of 
chairs. Their wives would have commended them for 
the deed. Yethill had not many admirers about this 
period. 

But he went on blindly. Can one ever forget how he 
crowed over having cured Mrs. Yethill of a tendency 
toward jealousy, of the vague and indiscriminating kind? 
The prescription consisted in posting to himself letters 
highly scented and addressed in a variety of feminine 
scrawls. Yethill was good at imitating handwriting! — 
and he absented himself from the domestic hearth for 
several days together whenever there was a recurrence 
of the symptoms. The method wrought a wonderful 
cure; but Mrs. Yethill began to grow elderly from about 
this period. You could hardly have called her a young 
woman, when the baby came, and brought his mother’s 
lost youth back to her, clenched in one pudgy hand. The 
vanished roses fluttered back and perched upon her thin 
cheekbones again. She was heard to laugh. Her hus- 
band, who secretly adored her, and who had continued 
to stick to the system more from a desire for her glorifi- 
cation than his own, feared a retrogression. So he 
thought out a new torture or two, and put them into 
active application. He sneered at the puerilities of 
nursery talk. He downcried the beauty and attainments 
of the baby when she praised them. He pooh-poohed 
her motherly fears, when the ailments inseparable from 
the joyous period of infancy overtook his heir. This was 
the last straw laid upon Mrs. YethilPs aching shoulders. 
The downfall of the great system followed. 


152 THE MAN WHO COULD MANAGE WOMEN 


In this way. His wife came into his workshop one 
morning. The workshop was forbidden ground, and Yet- 
hill dropped the negative he was developing, and turned 
to stare. He saw that she was very pale, and that her 
lips were bitten in. He heard her say that there was 
something the matter with baby, and she wanted the 
doctor. 

Solely in the interests of his wife whom he esteemed 
above all living women, Yethill refused to allow the doc- 
tor to be sent for. The child was as right as a trivet. 
Women were always worrying. She was to get away 
with her nonsense, and leave him in peace. With more 
to the same effect. She drooped her head, and went 
away obediently, only to return in half an hour, with 
another version of the same prayer upon her lips. Would 
he — would he come and look for himself? Yethill was 
thoroughly annoyed. Yethill refused. Yethill went on, 
stubbornly, dabbling with his negatives, until right from 
overhead — baby’s nursery was above the workshop — 
Yethill had never heard a woman scream like that be- 
fore. . . . Something like an ice-bolt shot down his 
spine. He dashed up to the nursery, and looked in. The 
sight he saw there sent him tearing across the Common, 
a hatless, coatless man, to the Doctor’s house. 

When the Doctor came he said he could be of no use; 
he ought to have been called in an hour ago. And 
Yethill, hearing this fiat, and meeting his wife’s eyes 
across the table, felt the system totter to its foundations. 

He found himself wondering at her for taking baby’s 
end so quietly; but he had schooled her to endure si- 
lently. There were no tears — he had always jeered at 
tears. The Doctor took him aside before he left. 

^^You must treat your wife with kindness — and con- 


THE MAN WHO COULD MANAGE WOMEN 153 


sideration, Yethill,” said the Doctor, ^^or I won’t an- 
swer for the consequences!” 

As if Yethill needed to be told to be kind or con- 
siderate! As if Yethill had never loved — did not love — 
the late Miss Sallis! He planned a revelation for her 
without delay. He would take her in his arms ; kiss her, 
and tell her that her time of trial was overpast; give 
her her meed of praise for her heroism, her meed of sym- 
pathy for her grief — and his. And he would own that he 
had made a mistake in the matter of baby deceased. 
And she would forgive — as she always had forgiven. 

As he decided this, she came into the room. She was 
quite composed. She carried something behind her. She 
spoke to him very quietly in a dull, strange, level voice — 
so strange a voice that, just as he was about to open his 
arms and say, ^‘Annie!” in the voice he had been saving 
up for the Day of Revelation, the gesture and the word 
wouldn’t come. 

^Tom,” said Mrs. Yethill, ‘Vhat should you say if I 
told you that I had made up my mind to kill myself?” 

She brought her hand from behind her; it held one of 
Yethill’s revolvers. She had been very much afraid of 
these lethal instruments in the early days of her mar- 
riage, but under the system had learned to clean them, 
and even drew the cartridges. But the thing she held 
wasn’t loaded, Yethill was quite sure of that. It sealed 
up the fountain of his admiring tenderness to have her 
treat him to commonplace, vulgar heroics. It put her 
out of drawing, and Yethill out of temper. 

She asked again: 

^What would you say if I told you I mean to kill 
myself?” 

Yethill ran his armor-plated head against the last wall. 
He answered brutally: 


154 THE MAN WHO COULD MANAGE WOMEN 


should tell you, if you were such a fool as to 
threaten such a thing, to do it, and have done with it!” 

She said, ^‘Very well!” — and did it. 

When people came running in, they found something — 
perhaps it was the system — scattered on the walls, on the 
floor, everywhere. And Yethill was howling, and beating 
his seven-inch skull against heavy pieces of furniture, 
and calling on Annie to come back. But she had es- 
caped, and was in no hurry; and he hadn’t the pluck to 
follow her out of the world and apologize. 

^‘Was she mad?” somebody asked the Doctor; and the 
Doctor said: 

‘‘No; but she might have become so if she had lived 
much longer with a lunatic!” 

“You mean ?” 

“I mean,” said the Doctor, “that Yethill has been suf- 
fering from dementia for years. I mean that he will see 
the inside of a Lunatic Asylum in six months from date.” 

But the Doctor was wrong. He did — in three! 


OBSESSED 


A ndrew FENN is known to the world as an art 
critic and essayist of unerring instinct and ex- 
quisite refinement, a writer of charming vers de societe, 
and teller of tales supposedly designed for children, but 
in reality more appreciated by children of a larger 
growth. He is much sought after, but little to be found, 
unless one has the entree to his pleasant, roomy old 
house in Church Street, Chelsea, where he lives in the 
midst of his library — the whole house is a library — his 
etchings and Japanese curios. He is less of a traveler 
than he used to be; getting old, he says, and lazy, con- 
tent with old friends, soothed by old pipes, fortified by 
old wine — he has a supreme gout in wines — and nour- 
ished by excellent cookery. 

His household staff consists but of an elderly valet and 
butler, and a housekeeper-cook. She has been in her 
master's service twenty years, and is beginning to grow 
handsome, Andrew is wont to say. Certainly, if her 
master speaks the truth, she must have been, when com- 
paratively young, extraordinarily unlovely, this most ex- 
cellent of women. Even now she infallibly reminds the 
casual beholder of an antique ecclesiastical gargoyle 
much worn by weather. Her name is Ladds. She has 
never been married, but respect for the position of au- 
thority she occupies in Andrew's household universally 
accords her brevet rank. She might have occupied an- 
other, and more important position, if 

^^Yes," Andrew says, when he is disposed to tell the 

155 


156 


OBSESSED 


story — and he often does tell it to intimate friends, 
leaning back on the library divan, after a cosy dinner, 
holding his gray beard in one big fist, still brown with 
tropical sunshine — “Ladds is an excellent creature. She 
might have married me, might Ladds 

We invariably chorus astonishment. Then some of 
Ladds’ famous coffee comes in, and Andrew gets up to 
hunt for precious liquors, and, having found them, con- 
tinues: 

“I came very near marrying her — once.” 

Somebody growls: “Good job you pulled up in time!” 

Andrew rounds on the somebody. “/ didn’t pull up. 
She did. Refused me!” 

There is a general howl. 

“I am telling you men the truth,” Andrew says, pulling 
the gray beard. “Fifteen years ago I was infatuated 
with that woman. She possessed my every thought; she 
dominated me, like ” 

“Like a nightmare!” 

“Apposite illustration,” says Andrew, nodding. “Like 
a nightmare. It was just about the time I published my 
book, Studies oj the Human Grotesque in Art, Ancient 
and Modern. You remember, some of you, I was keen 
on the subject — had been for years. And I was a trav- 
eler and collector in those days: I’d got together a won- 
derful show of illustrative subjects. You won’t see many 
of ’em now. I gave them to the Smoketown Mechanical 
Institute afterward.” 

He pulls at his long cherrystick, and blows a cloud of 
Latakia, and goes on: 

“I’d the whole house full. Peruvian idols, Aztec pic- 
ture writings, Polynesian and Maori war masks; Chi- 
nese and Japanese, Burmese and Abyssinian, Hindu and 
Persian monstrosities of every kind; Egyptian, Cartha- 


OBSESSED 


157 


ginian, Babylonian, Druidical, Gothic Well, well! 

I’m thoroughgoing, and when I do a thing I do it thor- 
oughly. It’s enough to say that every variety of libel 
upon the human face and form that human ingenuity or 
depravity has ever perpetrated, I’d carefully collected 
and brought together here.” 

He waves his hand, with a curious cabalistical ring 
upon it that once belonged, it is said, to Eliphas Levi, 
who had it from Albertus Magnus. But this may be 
mere report. 

^‘I worked hard, and drank a great deal of coffee,” 
says Andrew, ^^so much that my old housekeeper began 
to be afraid something mysterious was the matter with 
me. She expostulated at last, and I explained. Then 
she got interested in the book; she was an intelligent 
woman, poor dear old soul, and she got specially inter- 
ested in that section of the work which deals with the 
Grotesque in Nature. Everything in humanity that is 
purely grotesque — not deformed, unnatural, outrageous, 
but purely quaint and bizarre — I piled into those chap- 
ters. The work is illustrative, you know, as well as 
descriptive, and the queer photographs and engravings 
that scientific friends had contributed to this particular 
portion of it absolutely fascinated the dear old lady. 

“ ‘To be sure. Master Andrew’ (she had known me 
from my knickerbocker and peg-top days), ‘but them 
are queer folk. And, my heart alive!’ — she uttered a 
sharp scream — ^‘if that picture isn’t the exact moral of 
Jane Ladds!’ 

“I glanced over her shoulder. It was a portrait of 
Jane, certainly — a rude little wood cut of the sixteenth 
century, purporting to be a portrait of a female jester, 
attached, in her diverting capacity, to the Court of 
Mary Tudor, during the latter part of her reign, and 


158 


OBSESSED 


mentioned by name in some of the accounts of the Royal 
household as ‘Jeanne la Folle/ Unless the long-dead 
delineator of her vanished charms has shamefully belied 
them, Jeanne must have been one of the most grotesquely 
hideous specimens of womanhood that ever existed. 
Judge, then, whether the exclamation of my housekeeper 
awakened my interest, excited my curiosity, or left me 
apathetic and unmoved!’^ 

We are silent. Our interest, our curiosity, are urging 
us to hurry on the conclusion of Andrew’s story. 

“You may suppose that I bombarded my housekeeper 
with questions. What? Did a living counterpart of the 
sixteenth-century joculatrix exist in the nineteenth? 
What was her station in life? Where was she to be 
found? In reply, I elicited the fact that Jane Ladds 
was a countrywoman of my own, the daughter of a 
wheelwright living in the village of Wickham, in Dorset- 
shire, where I myself had first seen the light. Jane was 
some half dozen years my junior, it appeared. My 
mother had once taken her into her service as under- 
scullerymaid, but in a casual encounter with the last new 
baby (my brother Robert, now commanding his battery 
of the Royal Horse Artillery at Jelalabad), Jane’s fa- 
cial eccentricities had produced such a marked effect 
(resulting in convulsions) that the unfortunate protegee 
had been hastily dismissed. Since when she had kept 
house for her father, and was probably keeping it still; 
there not being, said my housekeeper, the slightest hu- 
man probability that any potential husband would en- 
deavor to interfere with the wheelwright’s domestic ar- 
rangements.” There comes a twinkle into Andrew’s 
brown eyes. 

“ ‘No man would be mad enough!’ the old lady said. 
Judge of her surprise when I turned upon her and or- 


OBSESSED 


159 


dered her to write — ^write at once to Dorsetshire, ascer- 
tain whether Jane was still alive, still available, willing 
to take service, under an old acquaintance, in a bache- 
lor’s London establishment? Stunned as she was, my 
housekeeper obeyed. The wages I instructed her to offer 
were good. An answering letter arrived within the space 
of a week, announcing Jane Ladds’ willingness to accept 
the offered situation. The letter was nicely written. I 
read and reread it with morbid excitement. I looked 
forward to the day of the writer’s arrival with an ex- 
citement more morbid still. At last the day came, and 
the woman; . . .” 

We inspire deep breaths, and unanimously cry, ^^Go 
on!” 

^‘My writing-table was piled high with books — I 
couldn’t see her until she came round the corner,” says 
Andrew, ^^and stood by my chair. She wore her Sunday 
clothes — Wickham taste inclines to garments of many 
colors. In silence I contemplated one of the finest ex- 
amples of the Animated Grotesque it had ever been my 
fortune to look upon. Her hair was then red — the 
brightest red. Her nose was not so much a nose as a 
pimple. Her mouth was the oddest of buttons. Her 
forehead a ponderous coffer of bone, overhanging and 
overshadowing the other features. She was lengthy of 
arm, short of leg, dumpy of figure. She did not walk — 
she waddled; she did not sit — she squatted. Her smile 
was a gash, her curtsy the bob of an elder-pith puppet. 
She was, as she is now, unique. You are all familiar 
with her appearance. Search your memories for the mo- 
ment when that appearance dawned upon you first, in- 
tensify your surprise, quadruple your sensations of de- 
light — add to these, imagine yourself dominated by a 
fascination, weird, strange — inexplicable. In a word ” 


160 


OBSESSED 


Andrew’s pipe is out; he is gesticulating excitedly, and 
his eyes have an odd gleam under his shaggy brows. 

“She took possession of me. I had her constantly 
about me. She brought me everything I wanted. I was 
never tired of gloating over my new-found treasure. 
Every accent of her voice, every odd contortion of her 
features, every awkward movement of her body was a 
fresh revelation to me. All this while I was working at 
my book. It was said afterward, in the newspapers, that 
the entire work, especially the closing chapters on the 
Human Grotesque, had been written in a fever of en- 
thusiasm. The reviewer never knew how rightly he had 
guessed. Some of the theories I propounded and proved 
were curious. That Ugliness is in reality the highest 
form of Beauty — beauty in the abstract — was one of the 
mildest. I believed it when I wrote it; for I was madly, 
passionately infatuated with the ugliest woman I had 
ever seen — my parlor maid, Jane Ladds!” 

We hang upon his words so that our pipes go out, and 
our whisky and sodas stand untasted at our elbows. 

“Yes,” says Andrew, drawing a long, hard breath, “she 
possessed my thoughts — dominated me — waking and 
sleeping. I had the queerest of dreams, in which, with a 
joy that was anguish, a rapture that was horror, I saw 
myself attending crowded assemblies with my wife, Jane 
Fenn, nee Ladds, upon my arm. She wore my mother’s 
diamonds, a decolletee gown from Worth’s; and as we 
moved along together, sibilant whispers sounded in my 
ears, and astonished eyes said as plainly, ^What an ugly 
woman!’ 

“Then would come other visions . . . Jane at the 
head of my table . . . Jane rocking the cradle of our 
eldest born — an infant who strongly resembled his 
mother . . . Jane here, Jane there — Jane everywhere! 


OBSESSED 161 

. . . My nerves, you will guess, must have been in a 
very queer state. 

“All the time Jane Ladds would be deftly moving 
about me, dusting my books and curios, or going on with 
her sewing, or, to the utter stupefaction of my house- 
keeper, I had issued orders that she should sit in the 
window, where my glance might dwell upon her when- 
ever I lifted my head from my work. Late, late into 
the small hours, when the sky began to gray toward the 
dawning, and the ink in my stand got low, she used to 
keep me company. Not the faintest shadow of impro- 
priety could attach to the association in any sane mind. 
My housekeeper thought it queer, but nothing more. 

“She had — she has — very large, very rough, very red 
hands. I used to imagine myself kissing one of those 
hands when I should ask her to be my wife, and conjure 
up the grotesque smile of shy delight with which she 
would accept the unheard-of honor. The temptation to 
snatch and kiss that awful hand became so powerful 
that it cost me more effort than I can explain to resist 
its ceaseless promptings. And I would chuckle as I 
looked at it, and at the bizarre countenance that bent 
over the stocking that was in process of being darned — 
Janets peculiar, shuffling gait seemed to have a peculiarly 
wearing effect on stockings — and wonder, if she hneWy 
how she would look, what she would say? Then she 
would thread her needle, or bite the end of her worsted. 
. . . That hand! that hand! The struggle between the 
masterful impulse to seize and kiss it, and the shudder- 
ing desire not to do anything of the kind, would, upon 
these occasions, be perfectly indescribable. And — one 
day — the very day that saw the completion of my book 
— I yielded!'^ 


16 ^ 


OBSESSED 


^^Yes?’^ we cry, interrogatively. All our eyes are 
rounded, all our mouths wide open. 

“She saw some of my papers flutter to the carpet as I 
pushed back my chair, Andrew continues, “and oblig- 
ingly crossed the room, stooped and gathered them up. 
A kind of mist came over my eyes, and when it cleared 
away, she was there — by my side — holding the written 
sheets out to me. That hand! I must — I must! Before 
the poor creature could hazard a guess at my intentions, 
I seized it — I kissed it — with a resounding smack. I 
cried deliriously, /Jane, will you be my wife? I adore 
you, Jane!' " 

“And what did she do? What did she say? . . 

“I'm coming to that! She drew away from me, and 
turned very white, and her poor red hands trembled, and 
her little button features twitched absurdly with the ef- 
fort she made to keep from crying. But, as I seized her 
hands, and went on with my wild asseverations and 
protestations — Heaven only knows what I said! — the 
absurdity of the whole thing came on her, and she burst 
out laughing wildly. Then I caught the infection, and 
followed suit. Once I began, I couldn't stop. I was 
shaken like a rag in the wind — torn, possessed by seven 
devils of risibility. But I went on raging, all through it, 
that she must marry me! At last she tore herself away, 
and ran out of the room, breathlessly to burst upon my 
housekeeper with the information that ‘Master was mad, 
and wanted the doctor.' And she was not far wrong, for 
by the time he came I was fit for nothing but to be car- 
ried to bed. Twenty-four hours later I was raving in 
brain fever. Seven weeks that red-hot torture lasted, 
and then I came to myself, and found that through all 
the delirium and fever I had been patiently, uncom- 
plainingly, tenderly nursed by poor Jane. . . ." 


OBSESSED 163 

Andrew’s voice grows a little husky as he nears the 
finish. 

^‘Well, when I was convalescent, and knew that I owed 
my life to her devotion, it seemed to me that only one 
reparation was possible for the wrong I had done Jane. 
It was a hard thing to do — the madness being over — the 
morbid impulse that had swayed me being no longer in 
the ascendant. But I did it! You may have noticed” — 
he clears his husky throat — “that is, those among you 
who have spoken to Ladds — that she has a singularly 
sweet voice — a voice curiously out of keeping with her 
personality. Well, when she thanked me for my ‘kind- 
ness’ and — refused me, I might, supposing my eyes had 
been shut, have fancied that I was listening to a beauti- 
ful woman. She had been ‘marked out by the Lord’ to 
lead a lonely life, she said. When she was a young girl 
it used to make her cry when the lads went by her, ‘wi’ 
their vaices turned away,’ and the girls laughed when 
she put on a ribbon or a flower. But she got used to it; 
and she quite understood that I was trying to make up — 
like a gentleman as I was; — (a mighty poor kind of gen- 
tleman, I felt) — ‘for summat as I’d said when I didn’t 
know what I was a-sayingl’ Crazy people had queer 
ideas, and the village ‘softy’ had once taken it into his 
head that he was in love with Jane. . . . And she 
thanked me for sticking to my word now that I was well, 
and she’d be my faithful servant always and for ever. 
Amen! Years have passed since then. . . . Well, she 
has kept her word. I hope, when the end of everything 
comes for me, that honest, tender, devoted heart will be 
beating by my pillow. I hope ” 

Andrew breaks off abruptly, and gets up and wishes 
us all good night. 


A VANISHED HAND 


TT7Hy/^ Daymond wrote, ‘‘do you imagine that I 
VV shall despise you for this confession? None hut 
a whole-souled, high-hearted woman could have made it! 
You have said you love me, frankly; and I say in return 
that had the fountains of my heart not been hopelessly 
dried up at their sources, they must have sprung forth 
gladly at such words from you. But the passion of love, 
dear friend, it is for me no more to know; and I hold you 
in too warm regard to offer you, in exchange for shekels 
of pure Ophir gold, a defaced and worthless coinage!’^ 

As Daymond penned the closing words of the sentence, 
the last rays of the smoky-red London sunset were with- 
drawn. Only a little while ago he had replenished the 
fire with fresh logs; but they were damp, and charred 
slowly, giving forth no pleasant flame. He struck a 
match and lighted a taper that stood upon his writing 
table. It created a feeble oasis of yellow radiance upon 
the darkness of the great studio, and the shadow of Day- 
mond’s head and shoulders bending above it, was cast 
upward in gigantesque caricature upon the skylight, re- 
duced to frosty white opacity by a burden of March 
snow. 

Daymond poised the drying pen in white, well-kept 
fingers, and read over what he had written. Underlying 
all the elegance of well-modeled phrases was the sheer 
brutality of rejection, definitely expressed. His finely 
164j 


A VANISHED HAND 165 

strung mental organization revolted painfully at the im- 
perative necessity of being cruel. 

“She asks for bread/’ he cried aloud, “and I am giving 
her a stone!” The lofty walls and domed roof of his 
workshop gave back the words to him, and his sensitive 
ear noted the theatrical twang of the echo. Yet the 
pang of remorse that had moved him to speech was quite 
genuine. 

“Fow have heard my story” he wrote on. 

A great many people had heard it, and had been bored 
by it; but, sensitive as Daymond’s perceptions were, he 
was not alive to this fact. 

^‘Seventeen years ago, while I was still a student 
dreaming of fame in a draughty Paris studio, I met the 
woman who was destined — I felt it then as I know it 
now — to be the one love of my life. She was an Amer~ 
ican, a little older than myself. She was divinely beau- 
tiful to me — I hardly know whether she was really so or 
not. We gave up all, each for each. She left husband, 
home, friends, to devote her life to me. I ” 

He paused, trying to sum up the list of his own sacri- 
fices, and ultimately left the break, as potent to express 
much, and went on: 

^^Guilty as I suppose we were, we were happy together 
— how happy I dare not even recall. Twenty-four 
months our life together lasted, and then came the end. 
It was the cholera year in Paris; the year which brought 
me my first foretaste of success in Art, robbed me of all 
joy in life. . . . She died. Horribly! suddenly! And 
the best of me lies buried in her grave!” 

The muscles of his throat tightened with the rigor that 
accompanies emotion; his eyelids smarted. He threw* 
back his still handsome head, and a tear fell shining on 
the delicately scented paper underneath his hand. He 


166 


A VANISHED HAND 


looked at the drop as it spread and soaked into a damp 
little circle, and made no use of the blotting paper to 
remove the stain. If any crudely candid observer had 
told Daymond that he dandled this desolation of his — 
took an aesthetic delight in his devotion to the coffined 
handful of dust that had once lived and palpitated at his 
touch, he would have been honestly outraged and sur- 
prised. Yet the thing was true. He had made his sor- 
row into a hobby-horse during the last fifteen years of 
honest regret, of absolute faithfulness to the memory of 
his dead mistress. It gratified him to see the well- 
trained creature dance and perform the tricks of the 
haute ecole. He was aware that the romance of that 
past, which he regretted with such real sincerity, added 
something to the glamour of his achieved reputation, his 
established fame, in the eyes of the world. The halo 
which it cast about him had increased his desirability 
in the eyes of the great lady who, after affording him 
numberless unutilized opportunities for the declaration 
of a sentiment which her large handsome person and her 
large handsome property had inspired in many other 
men, had written him a frank, womanly letter, placing 
these unreservedly at his disposal. . . . And Daymond, 
in his conscious fidelity and unconscious vanity, must 
perforce reply wintrily, nipping with the east wind of 
non-reciprocity the mature passion tendrils which sought 
to twine themselves about him. It was a painful task, 
though the obligation of it tickled him agreeably — an- 
other proof of the inconsistency of the man, who may be 
regarded as a type of humanity ; for we are all veritable 
Daymonds, in that the medium which gives us back to 
our own gloating eyes day by day is never the crystal 
mirror of Truth, but such a lying glass as the charlatans 


A VANISHED HAND 167 

of centuries agone were wont to make for ancient Kings 
and withered Queens to mop and mow in. 

Daymond pushed back his chair, and got up, and be- 
gan to pace from end to end of the studio. The costly 
Moorish carpets muffled the falling of his footsteps, 
which intermittently sounded on the polished interspaces 
of the parqueted floor, and then were lost again in velvet 
silence. In the same way, his tall figure, with its 
thoughtfully bending head and hands clasped behind it, 
would be swallowed up among the looming shadows of 
tall easels or faintly glimmering suggestions of sculptured 
figures which here and there thrust portions of limbs, or 
angles of faces, out of the dusk — to appear again with 
the twilit north window for its background, or emerge 
once more upon the borders of the little island of taper- 
shine. So he moved amid the works of his genius rest- 
lessly and wearily to and fro; and the incoherent mut- 
terings which broke from him showed that his thoughts 
were running, in the beaten track of years. 

^Tf I could see her again — if our eyes and lips and 
hands and hearts might meet for even the fraction of a 
minute, as they used to do, it would be enough. I could 
wait then patiently through the slow decay of the cycles 
for the turning of the key in the rusty wards, and the 
clanking of my broken fetters on the echoing stone, and 
the burst of light that shall herald my deliverance from 
prison! . . ” He lifted his arms above his head. “Oh, 
my dead love, my dear love! if you are near, as I have 
sometimes fancied you were, speak to me, touch me — 
once, only once! . . He waited a moment with closed 
eyelids and outstretched hands, and then, with a dry sob 
of baffled longing, stumbled back to his writing table, 
where the little taper was flickering its last, and dropped 
into his arm-chair. 


168 


A VANISHED HAND 


“And other women talk of love to me. What wonder 
I am cold as ice to them, remembering her!” 

It was a scene he had gone through scores upon scores 
of times — words and gestures varying according to the 
pathetic inspiration of the moment. He knew that he 
was pale, and that his eyes were bleared with weeping, 
and he had a kind of triumph in the knowledge that the 
pain of retrospective longing and of present loneliness 
was so poignantly real and keen. Out of the blackness 
behind his chair at that moment came a slight stir and 
rustle — not the sough of a vagrant draught stirring 
among folds of tapestry, but an undeniably human 
sound. But half displeased with the suspicion that there 
had been a witness to his agony, he turned — turned and 
saw Her, the well-beloved of the old, old time, standing 
very near him. 

Beyond a vivid sensation of astonishment, he felt 
little. He did not tremble with fear — what was there 
in that perfectly familiar face to fear? He did not fall, 
stammering with incoherent rapture, at her feet. And 
yet, a few moments ago, he had felt that for one such 
sight of her, returned from the Unknowable to comfort 
him — dragged back from the mysterious Beyond by his 
strong yearnings — he would have bartered fame, honor, 
and wealth — submitted his body to unheard-of tortures 
— shed his blood to the last heart’s drop. He had prayed 
that a miracle might be performed — and the prayer had 
been granted. He had longed — desperately longed — to 
look on her once more — and the longing was satisfied. 
And he could only stare wide-eyed, and gape with 
dropped jaw, and say stupidly: 

‘^Your 

For answer she turned her face — in hue, and line, and 
feature, no one whit altered — so that the light might 


A VANISHED HAND 


169 


illumine it fully, and stood so regarding him in silence. 
Every pore of her seemed to drink in the sight of him; 
— her lips were parted in breathless expectancy. Every 
hair of the dark head — dressed in the fashion of fifteen 
years ago ; every fold of the loose dress she wore — a gar- 
ment he knew again; every lift and fall of her bosom 
seemed to cry out dumbly to him. There was a half- 
quenched spark glimmering in each of her deep eyes, 
that might have wanted only one breath from his mouth 
to break out into flame. Her hands hung clasped before 
her. It seemed as if they were only waiting for the sig- 
nal to unclasp — for the outspread arms to summon him 
to her heart again. But the signal did not come. He 
caught a breath, and repeated, dully: 

“You! It is you?’^ 

She returned: 

“It is I!” 

The well-known tones! Recollection upsprang in his 
heart like a gush of icy waters. For a moment he was 
thrilled to the center of his being. But the smitten nerve 
chords ceased to vibrate in another moment, and he rose 
to offer her a chair. 

She moved across and took it, as he placed it by the 
angle of the wide hearth ; and lifted her skirts aside with 
a movement that came back to him from a long way off, 
like her tone in speaking — and, shading her deep gray 
eyes from the dull red heat with her white left hand, 
looked at him intently. He, having pushed his own seat 
back into the borders of the shadowland beyond the 
taper’s gleam and the hearth glow, looked back at her. 
That hand of hers bore no ring. When he had broken 
the plain gold link that had fettered it in time past, he 
had set in its place a ruby that had belonged to his 
mother. The ruby was on his finger now. He hid it 


170 


A VANISHED HAND 


out of sight in the pocket of his velvet painting coat, not 
knowing why he did so. And at that moment she broke 
the silence with: 

“You see I have come to you at last I 

He replied, with conscious heaviness: 

“Yes— I see!” 

“Has the time seemed long? ... We have no time, 
you know, where ... Is it many days since? ...” 

“Many days!” 

“My poor Robert! . . Weeks? . . Months? . . Not 
years? . . .” 

“Fifteen years. . . .” 

“Fifteen years! And you have suffered all that time. 
Oh, cruel! cruel! If there was more light here, I might 
see your face more plainly. Dear face! I shall not love 
it less if there are lines and marks of grief upon it — it 
will not seem less handsome to me at forty than it did at 
twenty-five! Ah, I wish there was more light!” The 
old pettishly coaxing tones! “But yet I do not wish for 
it, lest it should show you any change in me.'” 

“You are not changed in the least.” He drew breath 

hard. “It might be yesterday ,” he said, and left the 

sentence unfinished. 

“I am glad,” said the voice that he had been wont to 
recall to memory as wooingly sweet. “They have been 
kinder than I knew. ... Oh! it has always been so 
painful to recall,” she went on, with the old little half 
shrug, half shudder, “that I died an ugly death — that I 
was not pretty to look at as I lay in my coffin! . . .” 

Daymond recoiled inwardly. That vanity, in a 
woman, should not be eradicated by the fact of her hav- 
ing simply ceased to exist, was an hypothesis never be- 
fore administered for his mental digestion. 

“How curiously it all happened,” she said, her full 


A VANISHED HAND 


171 


tones trembling a little. ^‘It was autumn — do you re- 
member? — and the trees in the Bois and the gardens of 
the Luxembourg were getting yellowy brown. There 
were well-dressed crowds walking on the Boulevards, and 
sitting round the little tables outside the restaurants. 
One could smell chloride of lime and carbolic acid cross- 
ing the gutters, and see the braziers burning at the cor- 
ners of infected streets, and long strings of hearses going 
by; but nothing seemed so unlikely as that either of us 
should be taken ill and die. We were too wicked, you 
said, and too happy ! . . only the good, miserable people 
were carried off, because any other world would be more 
suitable to them than this. ... It was nonsense, of 
course, but it served us to laugh at. Then, because you 
could not sell your great Salon picture, and we could 
not afford the expense, you gave a supper at the Cafe 
des Trois Oiseaux (Cabinet jtarticulier No. 6) — and 
Valery and the others joined us. I was so happy that 
night . . . my new dress became me ... I wore yellow 
roses — ^your favorite Marechal NiePs. When I was put- 
ting them in my bosom and my hair you came behind 
and kissed me on the shoulder. 0, mon Dieu! mon Dieu! 
I can feel it now! We went to the Varietes, and then to 
supper. I had never felt so gay. People are like that, I 
remember having heard, just when they are going to die. 
Valery gaped — I believe he was half in love with me — 
and I teased him because I knew you would be jealous. 
In those days you would have been jealous of the studio 
ecorche. Ha! ha! ha!” 

Daymond shuddered. The recurrent French phrases 
jarred on him; something in her voice and manner scari- 
fied inexpressibly his sensitive perceptions. He won- 
dered, dumbly, whether she had always been like this? 
She went on: 


172 


A VANISHED HAND 


“And then, suddenly, in the midst of the laughter, the 
champagne, the good dishes — the pains of hell!” She 
shuddered. “And then a blank, and waking up in bed at 
the hospital, still in those tortures — and getting worse 
and seeing in your white face that I was going to die! 
Drip-drip! I could feel your tears falling upon my face, 
upon my hand; but I was even impatient of you in my 
pain. Once I fancied that I heard myself saying that I 
hated you. Did I really?” 

“I think — I believe you did! But, of course ” 

Daymond stopped, and shuddered to the marrow as she 
leaned across to him caressingly, so near that her draper- 
ies brushed his knee and her breath fanned upon his 
face. 

“Imagine it!” she cried, “that I hated you! You to 
whom I had given myself — ^you for whom I left my ” 

He interrupted, speaking in an odd, strained voice: 
“Never mind that now.” 

“I had always wished to die first,” she resumed, “but 
not in that way; not without leaving you a legacy of 
kind words and kisses. Ah!” (her voice stole to his ears 
most pleadingly), “do you know that I have been here, 
I cannot tell how long, and you have not kissed me once, 
darling?” 

She rose up in her place — she would have come to him, 
but he sprang to his feet, and thrust out both hands to 
keep her off, crying: 

“No! no!” 

She sank back into her seat, looking at him wide-eyed 
and wonderingly. “Is he afraid of me?” she whispered 
to herself. 

“I am not afraid of you,” Daymond returned almost 
roughly. “But you must make allowances for me at 
first. Your sudden coming — the surprise ” 


A VANISHED HAND 


173 


^^Ah yes! the surprise — and the joy 

He cleared his throat and looked another way. He 
was shamedly conscious that the emotion that stiffened 
his tongue and hampered his gestures was something 
widely different from joy. He spoke again, confusedly. 
^‘This seems like old times — before ” 

^‘Before I died,^^ she said, “without bidding good-bye 
to you. Dear! if you guessed how I have longed to 
know what you said and did when it was all over, you 
would not mind telling me. . . . ‘Are they grieving — 
those whom I have left behind?^ is a question that is 
often asked in the place I come from. You were sorry? 
You cried? Ah! I know you must have cried!” 

“I believe,” Daymond returned, moving restlessly in 
his chair, “that I did. And I — I kissed you, though the 
doctors told me not to. I wanted to catch the cholera 
and die, too, I believe ! . . .” 

“Yes?” 

“And when the people came with — the coffin, I” — he 
bit his lip — “I would not let them touch you! . . .” 

“My poor boy!” 

He winced from the tenderness. He felt with inde- 
scribable sensations the light pressure of that well-known 
once well-loved touch upon his arm. 

“And then — after the funeral, I believe I had a brain 
fever.” He passed his hand through his waving, slightly 
grizzled hair, as if to assist his lagging memory — really, 
as an excuse for shaking off that intolerable burden of 
her hand. “And when I recovered I found there was no 
way to forgetfulness” — he heard her sigh faintly — “ex- 
cept through work. I worked then — I am working still.” 

“Always alone?” 

“Generally alone. I have never married.” 

“Of course not!” 


174 


A VANISHED HAND 


A faint dissent began to stir in him at this matter-of- 
fact acquiescence in his widowed turtle-like celibacy. 
^‘It may interest you to know/’ he observed, with a touch 
of the pompous manner which had grown upon him with 
the growth of his reputation, “that my career has been 
successful in the strongest sense of the word. I have be- 
come, I may say, one of the leaders of the world of Art. 
Upon the decease or resignation of the President of the 

, it is more than probable that I shall be invited to 

occupy his vacant place. And an intimation has reached 
me, from certain eminent quarters” — he paused weight- 
ily — ^^‘that a baronetcy will be conferred upon me, in 
that event!” 

“Yes?” 

The tone betrayed an absolute lack of attention. She 
had once been used to take a keen interest in his occu- 
pations ; to be cast down by his failures and elated by his 
successes. Had that enthusiasm constituted the greater 
part of her charm? In its absence Daymond began to 
find her — ^must it be confessed? — but indifferent com- 
pany. 

In the embarrassment that momentarily stiffened him, 
an old habit came to his rescue. Before he knew it, he 
had taken a cigar from a silver box upon the writing 
table, and was saying, with the politely apologetic ac- 
cent of the would-be smoker: 

“May I? You used not to mind!” 

She made a gesture of assent. As the first rings of 
bluish vapor mounted into the air, Daymond found her 
watching him with those intent, expectant eyes. 

Feeling himself bound to make some observation, he 
said: “It is very wonderful to me to see you here! It 
was very good of you to come!” 

She returned: “They had to let me come, I think! I 


A VANISHED HAND 


175 


begged so — I prayed so, that at last ” She paused. 

Daymond was not listening. He was looking at her 
steadfastly and pondering. . . . 

It had been his whim, in the first poignancy of be- 
reavement, to destroy all portraits of her, so that with 
the lapse of years no faulty touch should bewray the 
memory of her vanished beauty. It struck him now for 
the first time that his brush had played the courtier, and 
flattered her, for the most part, unblushingly. He found 
himself criticizing unfavorably the turn of her throat 
and the swell of her bosom, and the dark voluptuous 
languishment of her look. The faint perfume of helio- 
trope that was shaken forth now, as of old time, from 
her hair and her garments no longer intoxicated, but 
sickened him. This, then, was the woman he had 
mourned for fifteen years ! He began to feel that he had 
murmured unwisely at the dispensation of Providence. 
He began to revolt at this recrudescence of an outworn 
passion — ^to realize that at twenty-five he had taken a 
commonplace woman for a divinity — a woman whom, if 
she had not died when she did, he would have wearied of 
— ended perhaps in hating. He found himself in danger 
of hating her now. 

“At last they let me come. They said I should repent 
it — as if I could !’^ Her eyes rested on him lingeringly; 
her hand stilled the eager trembling of her lips. “Never! 
Of course, you seemed a little strange at first. You are 
not quite — not quite yourself now; it is natural — after 

fifteen years. And presently, when I tell you Oh! 

what will you say when I tell you all?’’ 

She left her chair and came toward him, so swiftly 
that he had not time to avoid her. She laid her hand 
on his shoulder and bent her mouth to his ear. One of 
her peculiarities had been that her lips were always cold. 


176 


A VANISHED HAND 


even when her passion burned most fiercely. The near- 
ness of those lips, once so maddeningly desirable and 
sweet, made Daymond’s flesh creep horribly. He 
breathed with difficulty, and the great drops of agony 
stood thickly on his forehead — not with weak, supersti- 
tious terror of the ghost; with unutterable loathing of 
the woman. 

^‘Listen!’’ she said. “They are wise in the place I 
came from; they know things that are not known here 
... You have heard it said that once in the life of 
every human being living upon earth comes a time when 
the utterance of a wish will be followed by its fulfilment. 
The poor might be made rich, the sick well, the sad 
merry, the loveless beloved — in one moment — if they 
could only know when that moment comes! But not once 
in a million million lifetimes do they hit upon it ; and so 
they live penniless and in pain, and sorrowful and lonely, 
all their lives. I let my chance go by, like many others, 
long before I died; but yours is yet to come.’^ Her voice 
thrilled with a note of wild triumph; the clasp of her 
arm tightened on his neck. “Oh, love!” she cried; “the 
wonderful moment is close at hand! It is midnight now’^ 
— she pointed to the great north window, through which 
the frosty silver face of the moon was staring in relief 
against a framed-in square of velvet blackness, studded 
with twinkling star-points — “but with the first signs of 
the dawn that you and I have greeted together, heart of 
my heart! — how many times in the days that may come 
again! — with the graying of the East and the paling of 
the stars comes the Opportunity for you. Now, do you 

UNDERSTAND?” 

He understood and quailed before her. But she was 
blindly confident in his truth, stupidly reliant on his 
constancy. 


A VANISHED HAND 


177 


“When it comes, beloved, you shall take me in your 
arms — breathe your wish upon these lips of mine, in a 
kiss. Say, while God’s ear is open, Tather, give her 
back to me, living and loving, as of old!’ and I shall be 
given — I shall be given!” 

She threw both arms about him and leaned to him, and 
sobbed and laughed with the rapture of her revelation 
and the anticipation of the joy that was to come. 

“Remember, you must not hesitate, or the golden 
chance will pass beyond recall, and I shall go back 
whence I came, never more to return — never more to 
clasp you, dearest one, until you die too, and come to me 
(are you cold, that you shudder so?) — and be with me 
for always. Listen, listen!” 

As she lifted her hand the greatest of all the great 
clock voices of London spoke out the midnight hour. As 
other voices answered from far and near Daymond shud- 
dered, and put his dead love from him, and rose up 
trembling and ghastly pale. 

They moved together to the window, and stood look- 
ing out. The weather was about to change; the snow 
was melting, the thaw drip plashed heavily from roof 
gutters and balconies, cornices and window ledges. As 
she laid her hand once more upon his shoulder the stars 
began to fade out one by one, and in a little while from 
then the eastward horizon quivered with the first faint 
throes of dawn. 

“Wish!” she cried. “Now! now! before it is too late!” 
She moved as if to throw herself again upon his breast; 
but he thrust her from him with resolute hands that 
trembled no more. 

“I wish,” he said very distinctly, “to be Sir Robert 

Daymond, Baronet, and President of the before the 

year is out!” 


178 


A VANISHED HAND 


She fell away from him, and waned, and became un- 
substantial and shadowy like the ghost she was, and un- 
like the thing of flesh and blood she had seemed before. 
Nothing remained to her of lifelikeness but the scorn 
and anger, the anguish and reproach of her great eyes. 

^‘Only the dead are faithful to Love — because they are 
dead,” she said. “The living live on — and forget! They 
may remember sometimes to regret us — beat their 
breasts and call upon our names — but they shudder if we 
answer back across the distance ; and if we should offer 
to come back, ‘Return!’ they say! ‘go and lie down in 
the comfortable graves we have made you; there is no 
room for you in your old places any more!’ They told 
me I should be sorry for coming; but I would not listen, 
I had such confidence. I am wiser now! Good-bye!” 

A long sigh fluttered by him in the semi-obscurity, like 
a bird with a broken wing. There was a rattling of cur- 
tain rings, the dull sough of falling tapestry, and the 
opening and closing of a door. She was gone! And 
Daymond, waking from strangely dreamful slumbers to 
the cheerlessness of dying embers and burned-out candle, 
rang the bell for his servant, and ordered lights. A few 
minutes later saw him, perfectly dressed, stepping into 
his cab. 

“Chesterfield Gardens, Mayfair,” he said, giving the 
direction to his valet for transference to the groom. 

“Beg pardon, sir, but Lady Mary Fraber’s servant is 
still waiting!” The man pointed back to the house. 

“Ah!” said Daymond, who had had a passing glimpse 
of alien cord gaiters reposing before his hall-fire. “Tell 
him I have taken the answer to his mistress myself.” 

And as he spoke he scattered a handful of torn-up 
squares of paper — the fragments of a letter — in largesse 
to the night and the gusty weather. 


AN ORDEAL BY FIRE 


M r. LANTER was bookkeeping clerk in a New 
York dry-goods store. For his services he was 
remunerated at the rate of fifteen dollars per week. His 
bedroom at the boarding-house with daily breakfast and 
three meals on the Sunday, cost him ten dollars; the re- 
maining five supplied all other necessities — fed him at 
cheap restaurants, dressed him from cheap clothing 
stores, and allowed him to send a cash bill now and then 
to his mother, who lived in a New Hampshire village on 
tea, bread and sauce, wore her hair in looped bell-ropes 
on either side of her forehead and a rosette behind, and 
thought her son the most splendid man in the world. But 
despite heroic efforts, Mr. Lanter had not succeeded in 
putting by anything against a rainy day. As to mar- 
riage, it was not to be dreamt of, which is probably the 
reason why Mr. Lanter dreamed of it so frequently. But 
the feminine form that figured in those dreams was not 
that of a typist, or a sales-lady, or even a chorus-girl or 
variety artist. Mr. Lanter was a young man with a turn 
for reading, who regularly spent his Sundays at the 
Cooper Institute, and he did not feel that he could under- 
take to do his duty as a husband by anything short of a 
heroine of romantic classical fiction. He had had imag- 
inary love-passages with several of these, both ancient 
and modern. The Faery Queen had given him Britomart, 
and the Volsunga Saga had supplied him with Brunhild. 
Hypatia^s erudition made her a little alarming, but the 
affair was pleasant while it lasted; and Iseult was too 

179 


180 


AN ORDEAL BY FIRE 


dark for Mr. Lanter’s taste, but he changed the color of 
her locks as expeditiously as a French hairdresser, and 
roamed the forest ways with her more appreciatively 
than Prosper. Theaters Mr. Lanter did not frequent, 
because Mrs. Lanter regarded such places as pitfalls dug 
by the devil for the capture of unwary young America, 
and he had promised his mother he would not visit them. 
Indeed, had he been inclined to go back on his word, he 
could not have afforded to do so. But neither concert- 
halls, museums, nor circuses figured on Mrs. Lanter’s 
black list, because she had forgotten to specify them; 
and one half-holiday Mr. Lanter found himself entering 
Kneeman’s Star Musee with an order. 

The Kneeman Musee is a big, opulent building, with a 
central dome of colored glass, a gorgeous fagade orna- 
mented with groups of sculptured figures and a gilded 
vestibule where are displayed an array of life-sized 
photographs and gigantic colored posters illustrating the 
wonders to be seen within ; promising upon this occasion, 
among other exquisite novelties, the unique whistling 
entertainment of Madame Smithers, the Kentucky 
Mocking Bird; the Celebrated Centaur Family, in 
their feats of Equitation; the Balancing Bonellis, 
in their electrifying plank-and-ladder interlude; Mad- 
ame la Comtesse Piispok Ladany, the Beautiful Hun- 
garian (heroine of one of the most sensational European 
elopements) in her Elegant Effects of Equestrianism 
upon the highly-trained Arab Maimoun, assisted by 
Rurik the Gitano, who had the honor, upon the sensa- 
tional occasion above alluded to, of eloping with Mad- 
ame la Comtesse. Then came the Mermaids in a Tank 
Act, and three-inch notes of exclamation clamorously 
invited attention to the American Girl Giantess, 
Mademoiselle Minota, nineteen years of age, nine feet 


AN ORDEAL BY FIRE 


181 


in height, weighing four hundred and twenty-six pounds, 
able to lift a weight of one hundred and forty pounds 
with one hand. . . . The remainder of the bill was filled 
with dwarfs, performing lions, snake-charmers, and ven- 
triloquists. 

Mr. Lanter presented nothing remarkable to the ordi- 
nary observation. He was fair, undersized, and short- 
sighted, and the necktie he had chosen was of a vivid 
salmon-pink, trying to his complexion, which had been 
injured by overwork and close confinement in a glass 
counting-hutch lighted by electricity, and heated by 
steam. He followed his companion, who was a smart, 
bustling young salesman with a lady-killing reputation, 
and sporting proclivities; and as he went he smiled a 
little vaguely, and his mouth was not quite shut, a negli- 
gence which deprives the expression of intellectuality. 
They had fauteuil seats so close to the Ring that their 
knees rubbed against the low velvet-cushioned barrier 
that enclosed the sand-strewn space, which seemed to 
Mr. Lanter to be a brown central-patch, in a gorgeous, 
multi-colored dream. The dome above, all glass and 
gilding, the pretty women in the boxes, the perambulat- 
ing vendors of candy and ices, the orchestra tuning up 
in a gilded balcony on the left of the stage, the whiffs 
of menagerie, gas, and stabling which escaped from the 
coulisses, the people who pushed past into their places, 
Madame Smithers trilling and piping in emulation of the 
feathered songsters of American groves, the Centaur 
Family upon their gaily-trapped steeds, the bursts of 
applause, the shouts of laughter, were all made of dream- 
stuff. . . . But when heavy tableau-curtains rose upon 
a scene representing a mediaeval banqueting hall, and re- 
vealed the American Girl Giantess, throned upon a high 
seat, arrayed in gilded chain-mail and flowing purple 


182 


AN ORDEAL BY FIRE 


draperies, a sword in her large white right hand, a crim- 
son cloak upon her shoulders and a dragon-crested helm 
upon her large fair head, the start Mr. Lanter gave 
would have awakened any ordinary sleeper. But the 
dream closed in again, as Miss Minota rose, and, bowing 
to the right, to the left, to the middle, descended the 
baize-covered staircase which led from the stage to the 
Ring. . . . Other spectators saw a young woman mon- 
strously overgrown, with tow-colored hairplaits as thick 
as coir-cable, and blue eyes as round as silver dollars, 
who was well-proportioned in her huge way, and who, if 
looked at through the wrong end of an opera-glass, when 
divested of her tawdry theatrical trappings, might have 
appeared an honest, ordinary young person of 
average good looks. But Mr. Lanter saw a golden roof- 
ridge and a ring of magic fire roaring up, and the Brun- 
hild of his visions; and breathed hard, and felt a clammy 
sensation about the palms of the hands, while his heart 
drummed heavily against the lining of his ready-made 
waistcoat. He must have been very pale or very purple 
in the face, for his companion nudged him. 

^‘Guess you're feeling off color! . . . Like to get out 
into the air? ... If so. I'll keep your seat," he whis- 
pered; but Mr. Lanter shook his head. 

The band struck up a march, Miss Minota descended 
into the arena, a voluble gentleman in evening dress, 
who acted as showman, and, when necessary, as inter- 
preter, walking in the shadow of her elbow. She seemed, 
indeed, an overwhelming example of feminine physical 
development as she gravely performed her round, reply- 
ing in monosyllables to the remarks that were made to 
her by members of the audience, complying with their 
expressed desire to shake her enormous hand. Mr. Lan- 
ter was hot and cold by turns as her monumental pro- 


AN ORDEAL BY FIRE 


183 


portions drew nearer; he meant to rise in his place and 
boldly engage her in conversation; he got as far as 
getting on his legs. It seemed that the large blue eyes 
of the giantess dropped upon him inquiringly ; he almost 
fancied her about to pause. But his tongue refused to 
utter the word which would have arrested her progress. 
. . . She swept past, and it was as though the mainsail 
of a yacht had gone over on the starboard tack, empty- 
ing a whole breeze out of an acre of canvas. Another 
moment and she had ascended to the stage, her draperies 
of crimson and purple trailing as she went; she had 
lifted her weights, respectively guaranteed at one hun- 
dred and one hundred and forty pounds avoirdupois ; she 
had made her three bows, and the tableau-curtains had 
descended and closed. Thenceforward Mr. Lanter took 
no interest in the entertainment. With fishy eyes he sat, 
retrospective, unobservant ; and his companion, the lively 
Mr. Goter, found him mighty dull. 

“Oh, look here! . . . Say now! what’s up with you?” 
he protested, as they walked home together through the 
crowded streets. 

The clang of street-car gongs, the intermittent roar 
and rattle of the elevated railway, mingled with the blare 
of tin horns, and the clamor of voices. It was hot May 
weather, and there was a smell upon the languid air that 
seemed to combine in itself the flavor of rotten fruit, the 
musky odor of African skins, the pungent acridity of 
frying oil, and the rankness of coarse tobacco. 

“Up with me? Why, I’m all right,” said Mr. Lanter, 
“and I’ve had a real good time, thanks to you, old man!” 

“Come, have a drink?” said the pacified Goter, and 
they turned in at the swing doors of a beer saloon. 
“Bully, wasn’t she?” he broke out, after ordering two 


184 


AN ORDEAL BY FIRE 


iced bocks. ^‘My style all over! Guess IVe a good 
mind to take her on!” and he winked knowingly. 

Mr. Lanter set down his tall glass of untasted Miin- 
chener. ^‘Look here, who are you talking about?” He 
was salmon-pink to the edge of his black Derby hat, and 
his pale blue eyes had angry sparks in them. 

“That girl that did the jugglin’ business on the plank- 
and-ladder,” responded Goter. “Black eyes, black hair, 
high color, and spankin’ action. Did you s’pose I meant 
that walkin’ grain-elevator in the tin armor? No, sir!” 

He had yet another fulminating witticism on hand, and 
he discharged it. Before it had done crackling he saw 
stars, for the placable Lanter had suddenly smitten him 
upon the nose. 

“Good thunder! what are you up to, anyway?” splut- 
tered the astonished Mr. Goter. 

“Hoi’ off there! Go easy!” shouted the barkeeper. 
Half a dozen men, their drinks in their hands, their hats 
tilted back from interested faces, had gathered round, 
and a colored boy was mopping the red-stained marble 
table with a wet cloth. 

“He — he insulted a lady!” gasped Mr. Lanter, “and I 
struck him! If he does it again — I’ll do it again! . . . 
Mind that!” The tone and the look with which he de- 
livered the final warning convinced Mr. Goter that he 
had better mind. 

Thenceforward he ceased to regard Mr. Lanter as a 
“Willie” and Mr. Lanter ceased to regard himself as a 
Christian young man. His own violence had shocked 
him. There must be a good deal of cold reason, he re- 
flected, at the bottom of Mrs. Banter’s inveterate preju- 
dice against public places of entertainment, and his con- 
science pricked him. But she had made him promise 
that he would not go to “theaters,” and he salved his 


AN ORDEAL BY FIRE 


185 


conscience by reminding himself that he had kept his 
word. But he went again and yet again to Kneeman^s 
Star Musee. And upon the third occasion he mustered 
up courage to speak to Miss Minota. 

“How do you do?” he blurted out. Then as an after- 
thought he blurted out, “Mademoiselle.” He had to tilt 
his head quite back to look up into Miss Minota’s large 
fair moon-face. He wondered what she would say if 
anybody told her that she was his ideal of womanhood? 

“I guess I am very well, thank you,” responded the 
giantess. She had a plaintive, mooing voice, and despite 
the usage of a public career, she seemed little less bash- 
ful than Mr. Lanter. 

“Do you like NYork?” Mr. Lanter inquired. 

“Well,” Miss Minota returned, “I guess I do!” She 
sighed as she continued: “But one place is much the 
same as another to you — when you don’t see anythin’ 
more of it than the inside of the hotel where you happen 
to be located, and the inside of the hall where you chance 
to be exhibitin’.” 

“Why, now, that’s a shame!” said Mr. Lanter, growing 
red with sympathy. “Don’t your friends take you around 
some, when you feel you’d like to go?” 

“I suppose they’d be real pleased,” said Miss Minota, 
after an instant’s consideration, “if I didn’t attract so 
much attention. But when you’re too big to go on the 
cars, like other folk, or pass along the sidewalk without 

blockin’ it ” She shrugged her enormous shoulders 

with a little air of fatigue, and the gentleman in evening 
dress, who officiated as showman, gave her the signal to 
move. “Good-afternoon!” she said graciously, and 
passed on. 

But Mr. Lanter’s brain was surging with sympathy. 
“My gracious!” he cried to himself, “is it possible that 


186 


AN ORDEAL BY FIRE 


that splendid creature isn’t happy?” A vague look of 
gentle melancholy was certainly floating on the surface 
of those limpid china-blue eyes. He breathed through 
his nose and clenched his fists, one of which already bore 
a proof impression of Mr. Goter’s projecting front tooth. 
And the very next half-holiday found him waiting at the 
side door through which professionals found entrance to 
the back scenes of Kneeman’s. One or two sallow, 
cropped men in furred overcoats passed in, one of them 
in company with a black-eyed, vivacious, middle-aged 
woman, who conversed with her fingers, her shoulders, 
and every muscle of her face — and in whom Mr. Lanter 
recognized Goter’s houri. Then a vehicle like a hotel- 
omnibus, only taller and shinier, drawn by a pair of stout 
horses, pulled up by the curb; two men, moustached, 
and dressed in a kind of buff uniform faced with red 
(Mr. Lanter recognized it as the livery common to the 
attendants of the Musee), got down from the box seat 
and opened the omnibus door. . . . Mr. Lanter’s heart 
thumped wildly as a colossal foot and ankle, appareled 
in a pink silk stocking and rosetted black satin shoe, 
cautiously descended to the ground, and the rest of Miss 
Minota followed by gradual instalments until the giant- 
ess stood upright on the pavement, her nine feet of 
height handsomely accentuated by an umbrageous hat, 
with a plume of nodding feathers which might have 
served for the central ornament of a canopy of state. 
She inclined this tremendous headgear in gracious recog- 
nition of Mr. Lanter. Mr. Lanter took off his hat with 
his best manner, and boldly stepped forward. 

A large pink flush invaded the giantess’s immense 
cheeks, previously of a pale or dough-colored complexion. 
“Won’t you walk in a minute?” she said, in a timid, 
fluttering way. Then, not without difficulty, she went in 


AN ORDEAL BY FIRE 


187 


at the side-door, Mr. Lanter followed, the attendants 
mounted to their seats, and the large shiny omnibus 
drove away. 

The sensation of moving and speaking in a dream bore 
heavily upon Mr. Lanter as he followed the tall, stooping 
figure of the giantess up a short flight of stairs and 
through what seemed to be a labyrinth of winding 
passages, each of which seemed more dark and dusky 
than the preceding one, and conveyed a stronger olfac- 
tory impression of gas, mice, and turpentine. But the 
labyrinth ended in a vast echoing chaos of shaky canvas 
scenes and machinery, which Miss Minota introduced 
as the stage. The iron curtain that separated the stage 
from the auditorium was down, and they stood together 
in the midst of a heterogeneous jumble of properties 
among which Mr. Lanter recognized the plank-and- 
ladder of the equilibrists, the gilded props and rubber- 
covered block-tackle used by the tight-rope dancer, the 
belled and ribboned saddles employed by the Centaur 
Family, and Miss Minota^s mediaeval throne, flanked by 
the gilded weights employed in her exhibition of manual 
strength. 

^Won’t you ” Involuntarily he pointed to the 

gaudy throne-seat. 

“Well,’^ said the giantess, don’t know but what I 
will sit down — ^just a minute.” Seated, her large round 
face and china-blue, rather foolish eyes were above the 
level of Mr. Lanter’s as he stood before her. Certainly, 
but for the suet dumpling pallor of her fair complexion 
and a prevailing flabbiness, the result of insuflScient exer- 
cise, Miss Minota would have been good-looking. “I 
guess I ought to thank you for being so polite!” she said, 
and her tone and accent were homely as those of the 
New England village-folk among whom Mr. Lanter had 


188 


AN ORDEAL BY FIRE 


been raised. guess you thought I acted like I was 
silly just now; but boys do scare me so. . . . If there’s 
one thing more than another I dasn’t face, it’s a boy; 
and you bet boys know it, and lay along for me — the 
nasty little things ! So there’s another reason why I can’t 
go round like other folks — even if the management 
wouldn’t object to my givin’ the show away!” She 
folded her immense hands upon her knees and looked 
placidly at Mr. Lanter. 

^‘But why should the management object. Miss — 
Mademoiselle?” asked Mr. Lanter, standing, very red 
and stiff and embarrassed, at Miss Minota’s knee, like a 
somewhat dull little boy about to say a lesson. 

“Because once folks have seen me for nothin’, they’ll 
leave the pay-place alone,” said Miss Minota. “It’s 
human natur’, take it how you will. An’ I’m only 
Mademoiselle on the posters. My first professional ex- 
hibitin’ tour was in the State of Minnesota, an’ that’s 
how I got my professional name. My own name seemed 
kind of one-horse for a poster — Quilt — Miss Hattie Quilt 
of Smartsville, New Hampshire, I was when I lived to- 
home.” 

“I’ve been to Smartsville,” said Mr. Lanter eagerly, as 
though it were a bond. “It’s only forty miles from 
Saunderstown where I was raised. My mother, Mrs. 
Lanter, she lives there now. And Quilt’s a name I’ve 
heard. . . . There was old Deacon Quilt that had the 
lawsuit ” 

“I guess he was my grandfather!” said Miss Minota 
soberly. 

Mr. Lanter tilted his head, trying to remember what 
the lawsuit had been about. 

“It was a suit about an iron bedstead,” said Miss 
Minota. “It’s ’most ten years ago. Grandfather bought 


AN ORDEAL BY FIRE 


189 


it for me, because I’d crowded mother out of hers. We 
slep’ together till I was ’bout eleven years old. Well, 
grandfather measured me himself for that bed, but it 
didn’t get delivered for a month on end, and I’d growed 
beyond my measure, and didn’t fit it, or it didn’t fit me. 
Mother tried to convince the old man by showin’ him my 
frocks — she’d let ’em down eight inches only four weeks 
back, an’ they was hardly on speakin’ terms with my 
boot-tops by then — but he said on’y Jonah’s gourd 
growed at that rate, an’ the dry-goods man must change 
the bedstead or he’d go to law. An’ the dry-goods man 
said rather than have legal trouble he’d change the bed 
for a bigger, ’n he did ; but the new one was six weeks in 
gettin’ delivered, and it was the same story over again — 
it didn’t fit me, nohow ! So grandfather went to law, an’ 
the case was tried in the Smartsville court-house, an’ 
grandfather would ’a got damages if the dry-goods man’s 
lawyer hadn’t asked to have me produced in court. It 
was my first public appearance, an’ I was dretful shy. 
People used to laugh at me bein’ so shy, but you’ve no 
idee what a tryin’ thing it is bein’ bigger ’n anybody 
else — when you first find it out!” The large form of 
Miss Minota was convulsed by a shudder. You’d hide 
yourself in a mousehole, if it was big enough to hold you. 
Well, they called Miss Hattie Quilt, an’ I got up an’ 
straightened out, for I’d been settin’ cramped in a kind 
of pew, an’ it seemed even to myself as if I’d never end. 
An’ the judge looked at me through his glasses. My! 
didn’t he stare! An’ he asked how old I was, an’ I said 
‘Risin’ twelve’; an’ the judge allowed if I kep’ on risin’ 
I might get somewheres in time; an’ that a man with a 
granddaughter like that growin’ up about him ought to 
provide indiarubber bedsteads an’ a sliding roof. An’ all 
the folks laughed an’ grandfather had to pay sixty dol- 


190 


AN ORDEAL BY FIRE 


lars damages an’ costs.” Miss Minota’s gentle, monoto- 
nous, mooing voice left off talking; she paused to draw 
breath. 

“And then ?” said Mr. Lanter, in whose brain 

dim and faded hearsays connected with the Quilt law- 
case were stirring. 

“Then grandfather took a kind of down on me,” Miss 
Minota explained, “though he’d set a deal of store on me 
before. An’ mother used to beg me with tears in her eyes 
not to grow at that rate; an’ I tried not — hard; but I kep’ 
on. I stinted meals an’ wore an iron pound-weight on 
my head under my hat — but still I kep’ on. An’ at last 
grandfather opinioned to father and mother it was time 
to let out the house — or to let out me. So they hired me 
to Dan Slater — perhaps you’ve heard of Slater’s Travel- 
ing Museum of Marvels — an’ ” 

“I should have thought they’d been ashamed!” burst 
out Mr. Lanter, flushing to the temples. “Their own 
flesh and blood!” 

“That’s what other people kep’ saying to grandfather, 
Vour own flesh and blood’!” returned Miss Minota. 
“But all grandfather ever said was that there was more 
flesh and blood than he’d bargained for, and he’d thank 
’em to ’tend to their own affairs.” 

“I don’t think he was a nice kind of man,” said little 
Mr. Lanter, thrilling with indignation to his toes and 
finger-tips, “to send a young girl away from her home and 
her mother — out into the world — among strangers who 
might have treated her badly!” He looked up at his 
ideal of womanhood with passionate chivalry. 

“Oh, but they didn’t treat me badly!” said Miss 
Minota. “Dan Slater was real kind. An’ when I out- 
grew the caravan I traveled in at first, he telescoped two 
together — an’ as one of ’em had been made for the 


AN ORDEAL BY FIRE 


191 


giraffe, I got on pretty well. But IVe never got used to 
bein^ made a show of, an^ stared at, and asked questions 
by people, whether they’re ordinary folks or Kings an’ 
Queens an’ Serene Highnesses — an’ I guess I never will. 
Perhaps you wouldn’t believe it’s lonsome to be bigger 
’n anybody else — but it makes me feel so, times!” 

“I wish I could prevent your feeling lonesome!” burst 
out Mr. Lanter, before he was aware. “I wish I could 
carry you right away from this” — he waved his hand 
comprehensively — ‘^and take care of you. I wouldn’t let 
a rough breath blow on you as I could help. I’d stand 
between you and the world, and shelter you — I’d spend 
my life in doing it — and spend it gladly!” He forgot 
himself in what he was saying, and therefore did not 
blush, but his awkward, plain, and homely little figure in 
its badly-fitting store clothes was a spectacle to smile at. 
^‘Oh ! if you knew all I’d thought and dreamed of since I 
saw you first!” he said, with a quiver of passion in his 
voice. “It seems like a dream to be talking to you 
here. ... If it didn’t how could I tell you straight out 
as I am telling you now, what I haven’t even had the 
courage to write — that I — I ” 

Miss Minota modestly reared her Alpine height from 
the mediaeval throne as a trampling of feet sounded from 
the dusty passage beyond. “I guess I have got to go and 
dress,” she said modestly. 

“Oh, please wait one minute!” pleaded Mr. Lanter. 
“You must know it, if you never speak to me or look at 
me again. I think you the grandest, most glorious 
woman I ever saw! I’m ready to die for you right now, 
if the dying of a common store clerk would be any use! 
But it wouldn’t,” said Mr. Lanter, “and so I must go on 
thinking of you, and worshipping you, and loving you to 


192 


AN ORDEAL BY FIRE 


the end of my days ” He broke down, blushing and 

stammering. 

‘‘Oh, my!” cried Miss Minota. In her surprise she 
sat down again so unguardedly that the mediaeval throne 
creaked and tottered. “You don’t mean it? Honest, 
you don’t?” 

“I mean it with all my soul!” asseverated Mr. Lanter. 

Miss Minota blushed a dull red all over her immense 
face, as she met the young man’s rather ugly, candid 
gaze. Then her large china-blue eyes brimmed over; she 
pulled from her pocket a cambric handkerchief as large 
as the mainsail of a toy yacht, and began to cry like a 
thunder-cloud. 

“Don’t!” begged Mr. Lanter. “Please don’t! If you’re 
angry with me I don’t know what I should do. I don’t, 
indeed!” He was dreadfully in earnest, and quite pale, 
and large drops stood upon his forehead, for the air in the 
Musee was insufferably hot and close. There was a smell 
of charred wood and blistering paint, and the unsettled 
dust of the place made the straggling rays of daylight 
that bored their way into it seem blue and smoky. A 
sudden clamor of voices broke out below, almost under 
the stage it seemed, and then came the trampling of 
feet, the crash of broken glass, and the smell of some 
spilled chemical mingled with the grosser odors of the 
place. The scent, the stir, the sounds, seemed vaguely 
associated in Mr. Lanter’s mind with something danger- 
ous and sinister. But he was listening to Miss Minota. 

“I ain’t a mite angry,” said the giantess, giving her 
overflowing eyes a final dab with the handkerchief, now 
crumpled into a damp ball. “I should hate to have you 
believe it! I — I think you’re real generous, an’ kind, an’ 
noble. And I shall be grateful to you all my life” — she 
mopped her eyes again — “for makin’ me feel — for once — 


AN ORDEAL BY FIRE 


193 


like I’d been an ordinary-sized girl; for I — I’ll own I 
have fretted considerable. But there, when things can’t 
be altered, anyhow, it’s no good frettin’, is it? An’, of 
course, there could never be nothin’ between us — I 
couldn’t ever play it so low down on a man that’s as 
generous and kind as you are, as to say there could be. 
But I’m just as obliged. And now I’ll say good-bye, and 
if we don’t never meet again you’re to remember I was 
grateful. My land! I do believe the show’s afire!” 

For the crackling, blistering heat that parched the 
flooring underfoot, with the sudden volume of smoke that 
rolled upward, betrayed the condition of things no less 
than the thin tongues of flame that licked upward be- 
tween the boards. In the regions under the stage the 
conflagration had broken out; they heard the shouts of 
the stage-hands, the crash of glass fire-bombs breaking 
one after another, and next moment a solitary man, 
smoke-blackened and red-faced, burst upward from the 
regions below, and, rushing to the fire-hose, coiled like 
a brown snake against the bare masonry of the wall, 
began to haul it down. As the man tugged and swore 
at the hose, other voices shouted and other feet clattered, 
and half a dozen other men, singed and blackened like 
so many demons, emerged as the first had done, from 
those conjectural lower depths. 

*^It’s no use — no use!” they shouted as they ran, and 
the fireman dropped the hose and ran with them. They 
did not have to cross the charring, blistering stage, for 
they were on the right side for the passage-way. They 
fought and struggled, shrieking, in the narrow exit, 
blocked by their terrified bodies. 

^‘Come! Didn’t you hear?” shouted Mr. Lanter. He 
caught Miss Minota by the skirt and tugged at it like a 
faithful terrier. ^^Run!” he shouted again. But a chok- 


194 . 


AN ORDEAL BY FIRE 


ing volume of smoke, a blast of fiercer heat fanned up 
from below. The boards of the stage were now in fiames. 
And the flames were of beautiful, ravishingly-delicate 
shades of blue and hyacinth and orange-red. And they 
devoured where they licked with a deadly greed and a 
purring, crackling kind of satisfaction. . . . “Come!’^ 
Mr. Lanter shouted again. The giantess had sunk upon 
her knees, he shook her violently by the shoulder, and she 
lifted her large, terrified face and staring blue eyes, now 
for the first time upon a level with his own. 

“I dasn’t!” she cried. “The floor wouldn’t bear me — I 
should never git across! Save yourself while you have 
time!” As she sobbed and shuddered, Mr. Lanter put 
his arm round her, as though she had been quite an ordi- 
nary-sized girl. 

“Pluck up!” he shouted, for the fire roared as trium- 
phantly as though Kneeman’s Star Musee were the 
choicest morsel in the world. “I’ll get you out of this or 
burn with you, by — ^thunder!” and he kissed her. The 
kiss seemed to revive Miss Minota, for she gasped, and 
struggled to her feet, and looked with him upon a wall of 
rejoicing flame that soared upward between them and 
the passage-way. “These doors behind us — where do 
they lead?” Mr. Lanter shouted, and Miss Minota 
shouted back, “To the dressing-rooms!” 

There was no way of escape before them ; the iron cur- 
tain walled them in. As the slim greedy tongues of fire 
began to lick the boards on which they stood, they re- 
treated to the back of the stage. But the stifling smoke 
and the greedy fire followed them, and the end of things 
seemed not far off. ... It seemed quite natural now 
that they should be holding hands. They were blackened 
both, and smoke-begrimed, parched and giddy with the 
terrific heat, and the incandescent air fanned on their 


AN ORDEAL BY FIRE 


195 


smirched faces as though the wings of Azrael had stirred 
it; but they were a comfort to each other. To be heard 
by each other in that fiendish tumult of insentient things 
was impossible; but they pressed close to one another 
like children in the smoky dark, and held one another’s 
hands. 

“I don’t know as I’d choose to have things different,” 
said a grip of Mr. Lanter’s; and the answering squeeze 
of Miss Minota’s large hand said, “Thank you for help- 
ing me to die so like an ordinary-sized girl!” But the 
hand she pressed seemed to melt in hers and slip away, 
and, groping downward in the dun-colored smother, the 
giantess touched the senseless body of Mr. Lanter lying 
at her feet. And then she gave a cry of love and grief 
and anger mingled, as an ordinary-sized woman might 
have done — and lifted her lover from the blistering floor 
as though he had been a baby. The smoke seemed less 
dense a few feet beyond where she stood, and, moving 
forward with Mr. Lanter held upon one arm, the other 
outstretched gropingly. Miss Minota bruised her knuckles 
against a wooden door. It was the high, narrow door of 
solid, iron-clamped timber (usually situated at the back 
of the scene-dock) , by which scenery and the more bulky 
properties were hoisted up to or removed from the stage 
of Kneeman’s Musee. In the joy of the discovery Miss 
Minota cried out. Then she laid down Mr. Lanter very 
gently on the floor, and fumbled for the door-bolts. But 
the door opened by a winch and lever, and Miss Minota 
fumbled in vain. A chill despair seized her. He lay so 
helpless and inert at her feet that he might have been 
dead! “0 Lord!” Miss Minota prayed, “where’s the 
use in You havin’ made me so much bigger than other 
folk if I can’t save him? Help me to do it, and I’ll never 
go back on You by grumblin’ at my size any morel” 


196 


AN ORDEAL BY FIRE 


A dizziness overcame her, she reeled and staggered 
against the side wall of the scene-dock, bruising her knee 
against something that fell with a dull, reverberating 
crash. It was a solid bar of iron used by a professional 
athlete in a weight-lifting exhibition, and it might have 
weighed a hundred and sixty pounds. The crash of its 
fall brought Miss Minota to herself. She stooped, and 
found and lifted it, and exultant, for the first time, in the 
stature and the strength that marked her out and set her 
apart from her ordinary-sized sisters, the giantess at- 
tacked the door. One battering blow from the weapon 
wielded by those tremendous arms, and the hinges started 
and the stout planks split; a second, and a plank crashed 
splintering outward; a third, and a shout went up from 
the crowd assembled in the street below, as, amid vol- 
umes of escaping smoke, the begrimed and fire-scorched 
figure of Miss Minota appeared, carrying the insensible 

body of Mr. Lanter in her arms. 

***** 

“Well,” said Madame Lanter, the Colossal American 
Marvel, some months later, to an interviewer specially 
despatched from the office of the Boston Magpie, “I 
guess you know what happened after that!” She blushed 
a little, being yet a bride, and coyly turned her wedding 
ring, a golden circlet of the dimensions of a baby's brace- 
let, upon her colossal finger. “We brought him to, and 
then he brought it off. Flesh an’ blood is flesh an’ blood, 
an’ we all have our weak p’ints! — and if I did lay out 
never to marry a man as I couldn’t look up to — I guess 
it would take half a dozen of my size, standing on each 
other’s heads, to equal the loftiness of Mr. Lanter’s 
mind!” 

The young man thus eulogized presented to the re- 
porter’s view a spare and rather undersized personality, 


AN ORDEAL BY FIRE 


197 


plain of feature, and awkward of manner, drawbacks 
afterward transmuted by the magic touch of the stylo- 
graphic pen into ^^slightness, unpretending elegance, and 
unaffected simplicity. The beaming affection discernible 
in the glance he turned upon his stately bride justified 
the eulogistic terms in which that lady spoke of her hus- 
band. Their brief but thrillingly romantic courtship, 
with its strikingly sensational ^denouements created a 
* furore^ when detailed by the New York press. The dis- 
interested nature of the attachment of Mr. Lanter ( who 
is a member of one of our oldest New England families) 
to the superb specimen of American womanhood who 
bears his aristocratic name may be gathered from the 
fact that the marriage ceremony was some weeks old 
before Mr. Lanter discovered that Mrs. Lanter had 
amassed, during the period of time spent by her in ex- 
hibiting her personal developments in the principal cities 
of Europe and the States, a fortune of ninety-five thou- 
sand dollars.’^ 

And in this final statement the stylographic pen dis- 
tilled pure truth. 


HOW THE MISTRESS CAME HOME 


T he avenue of lofty elms was veiled in a white fog; 

upon the low-lying parklands, cropped meadows, 
and sere stubble-fields, the same woolly vapor lay 
dankly. But the square windows of the fine old Tudor 
manor-house flashed with ruddy light, and the hospitable 
hearth-fires of the hall diffused glow and radiance 
through open doors. Sir Vivian and Lady Wroth were 
coming home after a honeymoon of eight months’ dura- 
tion spent in scampering over the face of the habitable 
globe; and the village was in a state of loyal ferment 
over the advent of the lord and lady of the manor. Al- 
ready the local band, heavily primed with home-brewed, 
was posted at the station in readiness to burst into the 
strains of ^‘See the Conquering Hero” upon the arrival 
of the London express. Eight sturdy laborers, in clean 
smock-frocks, waited, rope in hand, for the opportunity 
of harnessing themselves to the bridal brougham, while 
Venetian masts, upbearing strings of flags and fairy 
lanterns, testified to the strength and temperature of 
popular good-will. 

“A sweet pretty creature, ’m, I hear!” said Mrs. Ans- 
dey, the white-haired, handsome, black-silk-clad house- 
keeper to the Rector’s wife, who had driven up to the 
house to ask for a cup of tea, and leave a parcel ad- 
dressed to the new mistress of the manor, containing 
three dozen very raspy cambric handkerchiefs, hemmed 
and initialed by the Girls’ Sewing Class at the National 
Schools. 


198 


HOW THE MISTRESS CAME HOME 199 

^^Quite a picture, Sir Vivian's valet said!” added the 
butler, who was comparatively young, not being over 
sixty, and therefore looked down upon by Mrs. Ansdey 
from her vantage of fifteen summers. 

“Beauty is grass!” said the Rector's wife, who was not 
overburdened with the commodity. She was a long, thin, 
high-nosed woman, with color distributed over her coun- 
tenance in little islands. She drank her tea, and toasted 
her large, useful feet at the glowing wood-fire, and 
praised the Sally Lunns. 

Her reverend partner was down at the village reading- 
rooms, rehearsing the shrill-voiced schoolchildren in the 
“Greet Ye To-night, Thrice Happy Pair,” chorus from 
Lohengrin. She knew the quality of the cocoa to be 
obtained there, and longed to share with him the hospi- 
table burden of Mrs. Ansdey's silver tray. But as this 
amicable division of spoil was manifestly impossible, the 
Rector's wife consoled herself by making a clean sweep. 
And so she ate and drank and chatted to the not dis- 
pleased Mrs. Ansdey with unflagging vigor, while the 
famous Reynolds portraits of departed ladies of the 
manor smiled and simpered from the shining paneled 
walls, and the gray-muzzled bloodhounds, last of a 
famous race and favorite of the last Baronet, snored 
upon the leopard-skin hearthrug. 

“You have had many visitors this season?” queried 
the Rector's wife, with a calculating glance at the dona- 
tion box, the contents of which went to the Cottage Hos- 
pital twice in the year. 

“Troops of them,” returned the housekeeper, nodding 
her lace lappets. “And, as usual, half of 'em with Ameri- 
can twangs. Even if they didn't talk through their 
noses, I should guess 'em from the States, shouldn't you, 
Mr. Cradell?” 


200 HOW THE MISTRESS CAME HOME 


^‘Without doubt, ma’am,” rejoined the butler. “There’s 
a feverish anxiety to get the greatest amount of informa- 
tion in the shortest possible time, and an equally ardent 
determination to finger what isn’t meant to be fingered, 
price what can’t be priced, and buy what isn’t for sale, 
which, to my mind, is a trademark distinguishing the 
bearer, male or female, as hailing from the other side of 
the Atlantic.” 

“Even if he didn’t call me 'marm’ — if he’s a man and 
middle-aged, and put American dollars in the box instead 
of English half-crowns if he happens to be a lady,” con- 
tinued Mrs. Ansdey. “But what I will say is, if it was 
with my latest breath, that the young ladies are most 
elegant and have a real appreciation for old and what 
you might call romantic things,” she added somewhat 
hastily ; and the Rector’s wife said, as she added sugar to 
her fourth cup: 

“The new Lady Wroth is an American, I have always 
understood.” 

“Born in Washington, but edicated in Paris,” said Mr. 
Cradell, putting a fresh log of apple-wood upon the glow- 
ing fire at the lower end of the hall. 

“She comes of a fine old family, we have always under- 
stood,” said the housekeeper, smoothing her lace apron 
with her plump white hands. “Rutherfoord her maiden 
name was, and with her beauty and her jewels — for her 
late papa was a Senator, besides being what I’ve heard 
called a Railway King — she created a sensation when 
she was presented by the Duchess of Balgowrie last May 
but one.” 

“As to her style of good looks,” said Mr. Cradell, dust- 
ing lichen from his coat, “Sir Vivian was always partial 
to dark beauty. ‘What is she like?’ says he to me when 
I took the liberty of asking, as an old servant may. ‘A 


HOW THE MISTRESS CAME HOME ^01 


black pearl, Cradell, and I hope to wear my jewel in my 
bonnet as my ancestor Sir Guy wore Queen Elizabeth’s 
ruby — until the day I die!’ He’d a light in his eyes when 
he said it, and what with love and happiness and all, he 
looked more like a boy of twenty-three than a man of 
forty. And I said to Mrs. Ansdey, Tf ever there was a 
love-match,’ I says, ‘Sir Vivian’s is one.’ And now the 
carriage is waiting at the station to bring home both the 
master and the mistress — bless them both!” 

“She wrote to me from Mentone,” went on Mrs. Ans- 
dey, “and I truly call it a pretty thought, and a gracious 
one, of me that have been my master’s nurse, and held 
him on my knees when he picked out bounding ‘B’ and 
curly ‘Q’ with an ivory crotchet-hook.” She produced 
from a morocco pocketbook, of solid and responsible ap- 
pearance, a letter written with violet ink on thin, foreign 
paper, in delicate upright characters. “ ‘My husband has 
told me of all your faithful service and true devotion to 
him and his/ she read; ‘and I hope before long to take 
your kind hand in mine and thank you for him and for 
myself!^ There now!” 

“Gracious and graceful too,” said old Cradell, who 
had beaten noiseless time to the reading of the young 
mistress’s letter with one wrinkled finger on a withered 
palm. “Good breeding there — and old blood — in every 
line!” 

“And she looks forward to seeing her husband’s dear 
old English home,” went on the housekeeper, “and prays 
God to give them many days in it together — and I trust 
He will!” 

“Let us hope so, for all concerned!” said the Rector’s 
wife, who resented theological references as trenching 
upon her own particular province. 

“Though in this family it’s been like a fate, or a doom. 


202 HOW THE MISTRESS CAME HOME 


or whatever you might please to term it,” said Mrs. Ans- 
dey, ^‘that the course of true love, the deeper it was and 
the truer it was, was always to be broken — not by change 
or faithlessness of one that loved, but by the hand of 
death. There was Sir Geoffrey and Lady Euphrasia — 
hundreds of years back — that were drowned crossing the 
ford on the ride home from their baby’s christening and 
the baby lived to be Sir Launcelot, whose bride was car- 
ried off by the Black Death before the roses on her wed- 
ding garland were withered. . . . And then there were 
Sir Alan and Sir Guy, who were both killed in battle 
within a year of their weddings, and Sir Vivian’s great- 
grandfather, old Sir Vivian, found his young wife dead 
at her tapestry- frame when he’d crept up. quiet to sur- 
prise her with his unexpected return from the Embassy 
to Rome. And Sir Vivian’s own dear mother lived but 
a very few years after the dear child came to comfort 
her for his father’s early loss. But time goes by, and the 
curse — if it be a curse, as they say it is, brought upon 
the founder of the family for some secret deed of evil — 
the curse may have passed over, or worn itself out. 
What’s that?” 

‘‘What’s what, ma’am?” asked the butler, as Mrs. 
Ansdey rose in her rustling silks and made a sign for 
silence. 

“I fancied I heard a timid kind of tap on the hall 
door,” said the housekeeper. 

“A robin blew against it, perhaps,” said the butler. 
“They’re stupid with the frost.” 

“There was a footstep too,” said Mrs. Ansdey, holding 
up her hand and making her old-fashioned rings gleam 
and twinkle in the firelight. “At least, if there wasn’t, 
Mr. Cradell, I admit I’ve been deceived!” 

“We’ll see, we’ll see!” gaid Cradell, moving to the 


HOW THE MISTRESS CAME HOME £03 


great oaken door. “It may be a tramp.’^ The handle 
turned, the massive oak door moved inward. The fog 
had thinned, it had grown clearer beyond doors. Within 
the frame of the massive lintels appeared the glimmering 
stone steps, a segment of the formal garden, with its 
black Irish yews, pale marble urns, and cartwheel beds 
of late flowers, enclosed within borders of box. Beyond 
the trees reared a somber barrier, shutting out the sky, 
and the chill wind of winter drove the dead leaves in 
swirls and drifts across the melancholy picture. The 
Rector’s wife, thinking of her walk across the park to 
the Rectory, sniffed and shivered, and the housekeeper 
motioned to the butler to shut the door. 

“For I was mistaken, as you see, and there’s not a 
living soul about, unless it’s skulking in the shadow of 
the trees,” she said. “Another cup of tea, or a drop of 
cherry-brandy, ma’am, to keep the bitter air out as you 
walk home? Though there’s no reason you should walk 
when there’s the pony-chair. ... Or perhaps you would 

rather ” She started. “Call me nervous, or finical, 

or what you like,” she said, peering anxiously through 
her gold-rimmed spectacles in the direction of the door. 
“But, if I spoke with my dying breath, there was a tap, 
and then a pause, and then another tap, as plain as plain 
could be!” 

“Dear me!” The Rector’s wife, alarm in her eyes and 
crumbs on her chin, rose from her chair, dropping her 
imitation sable boa. “I really believe I heard it too! 
. . . Had you not better ?” 

Cradell shook his old head and clucked softly with his 
tongue. “The ladies must always have their way!” he 
said, shuffling on his neatly polished shoes toward the 
hall door. He opened it, and both the housekeeper and 


204 HOW THE MISTRESS CAME HOME 

the Rector’s wife uttered a simultaneous exclamation of 
surprise. 

For a woman was standing in the moonlight outside. 
She was of slight form, and wore a wide-brimmed feath- 
ered hat, and the heavy shadow of the portico fell 
blackly over her, so that she seemed no more than a 
silhouette with a pale glimmering background. But a 
delicate perfume stole upon the senses of those who, from 
within, looked out at her, and when she moved there was 
the unmistakable frou-frou of silken linings. 

“Ma’am!” the butler began. 

“I came on before,” a sweet plaintive voice said — a 
voice that was viola-like in its rather thin, but sweet and 
vibrating quality. “And you must be Cradell.” 

the old servant said again, while the Rec- 
tor’s wife and the housekeeper listened with strained 
anxiety. 

“I am Lady Wroth,” came in the clear, vibrating tones. 
“I came on before. ... It does not matter why. There 
was a slight accident between Greystoke Station and the 
Elvand Tunnel. Do not be alarmed. Sir Vivian is safe, 
quite safe,” she went on, as agitated exclamations broke 
from the three listeners. “Indeed only one person was 
killed, though two or three are injured, and he — my hus- 
band — is helping the sufferers. He is always like that, so 
ready to help, so full of sympathy. . . 

She was now standing in the firelight, whose ruddy 
glow illumined the slight figure, and drew gleams of 
crimson and emerald from the jewels at her throat and 
shone in the depths of her great dark eyes. Her face was 
of delicate, pearly paleness, her hair had the tints of 
autumn leaves, and her draperies, too, were of the tints 
of autumn. She drew off a glove, and her wedding ring, 
with its diamond keeper, showed upon the slight and 


HOW THE MISTRESS CAME HOME 205 


pretty hand, as her traveling mantle of velvet trimmed 
with costly sables fell to the floor. 

^‘Oh, your ladyship!” cried the housekeeper. “What 
must you think of us — standing here and staring? But 
as goodness sees us — what with your sudden coming, and 
the news about the accident, and all — we’ve lost our 
heads, me and Mr. Cradell!” 

“So very alarming!” said the Rector’s wife. “I trust 
Lady Wroth will excuse what may seem like an intru- 
sion ” 

“The intrusion is mine,” said the sweet viola-voice. “I 
should have given warning of my coming, but it was not 
to be. Oh! the dear house!” She looked with wondering, 
shining eyes upon the paneled walls, the trophied arms, 
the noble pictures, and the quaint antique furniture, and 
between her lips, of the faintest rose, her delicate teeth 
gleamed like pearls, as her breath came quick and eager. 
“Vivian’s old home . . . Vivian’s home, and mine!” she 
whispered to herself, and laid a hand upon her heart, as 
though to check its beating. 

“I will not intrude,” said the Rector’s wife. “I will 
hope for the pleasure of calling, with the Rector, at a 
more fltting time. Good-night, Lady Wroth.” 

The Rector’s wife had held out her large hand in its 
cheap glove, but the new mistress of the manor only 
smiled upon her with vague wistful sweetness, and did 
not touch the massive extremity. Whereupon its owner 
set down Lady Wroth as “proud,” and made a mental 
note to tell the Rector so, as her large feet carried her 
out of the house and out of the story. 

The two old servants exchanged a glance as the slight 
figure of their mistress moved across the polished floor, 
strewn with Oriental rugs and skins of wild beasts. 

“Would my lady wish to go to her room, or to have 


206 HOW THE MISTRESS CAME HOME 


some refreshment in the dining-room?” the housekeeper 
asked. 

My lady declined. 

“I have no need of anything. I only wish to rest a 
little and see my husband’s home before starting upon a 
journey,” she explained. 

“A journey? Dear, gracious me! And your ladyship 
just fresh from travel, and shaken by an accident and 
all!” cried Mrs. Ansdey, shaking her lace lappets. 

^‘1 am so used to travel,” said her ladyship, “though 
this is the longest journey I have ever taken — or ever 
shall take!” She smiled upon the two old people, and 
settled herself in the seat she had chosen, and resting her 
elbow upon the arm of it, and her pretty chin in her deli- 
cate palm, let her sweet shining eyes travel about the 
place. “All as he described it, yes!” she whispered to 
herself. “The mullioned windows with the coats of arms, 
the carved and painted ceiling, the hooded Tudor fire- 
places, the arms and the pictures. . . . That is the great 
Gainsborough portrait of Sir Alan’s young wife, the girl 
who died of grief when they brought her husband’s baton 
of Field Marshal to her — won an hour before he was 
killed in battle. There is the painting by Velasquez of 
the Wroth who was made Bishop of Toledo. That must 
be the Vandyck of Lady Marjorie with the deerhound 
by her side, and there is the Watts picture of Vivian’s 
young mother playing ball with her boy. Ah! what a 
sweet, sweet child!” 

The plaintive voice thrilled and trembled. Tears might 
not have been far from the shadowy dark eyes, as Lady 
Wroth rose and moved to the foot of the great staircase, 
attended by the housekeeper. 

“Shall I show you your rooms, my lady?” Mrs. Ansdey 
began. “The fires are burning beautifully, and every- 


HOW THE MISTRESS CAME HOME 207 


thing is quite ready, and I feel sure your ladyship must 
need rest after ” 

“I will rest presently. But what I wish now, is to be 
shown the house, if you are not too tired. Lady Audrey’s 
turret, and the paneled chamber where Sir Roger fought 
the duel with the Spanish cavalier, and the bedroom 
where Queen Elizabeth slept, and the banqueting-hall 
and the chapel where the Templar’s heart is buried under 
the altar, and the gallery where Lady Euphrasia danced 
with King Henry VIII., in masquing dress, and the 
whispering corridor, and the painted room ” 

^‘And the ghost-chamber, my lady? Oddly enough, 
that’s the first room that American ladies ask to see! 
. . . But maybe your ladyship doesn’t believe in ghosts, 
or the fact of its being late and getting dark ” 

Lady Wroth laughed quietly and sweetly. ^‘Do you 
believe that the spirits of those who have passed on can 
only appear in the dark, dear Mrs. Ansdey?” 

The housekeeper rustled her stiff silken skirts as she 
followed her new mistress up the broad staircase with 
its carven balusters and mossy carpets. 

'T don’t believe in ghosts at all, my lady!” 

^‘Not in ghosts as they are commonly imagined; those 
shadowy white things that point and scare and hover,” 
came floating back in the thin, sweet tones; ^‘but in the 
spirits of the departed — it may be long-dead, or newly 
called from earth — who borrow for a little while the sem- 
blance in which they lived and loved, and return for one 
last look at a beloved home, or come for one dear glimpse 
of what might, but for the Infinite Eternal Will, have 
been a home. You believe in them, do you not? Or, if 
you do not now, you will! Ah, yes! you will, dear Mrs. 
Ansdey!” 

Looking upward from the hall, the butler saw the 


208 HOW THE MISTRESS CAME HOME 


slight figure of Sir Vivian’s bride traverse the first land- 
ing and pass out of view, followed by the portly figure of 
the housekeeper; and in that moment came the grind of 
wheels upon the avenue, a loud knock at the hall-door, 
and a sharp peal at the bell. Two liveried servants, ap- 
pearing in haste, admitted the master of the house, and 
at the first glimpse of Sir Vivian’s ghastly face and torn 
and disordered garments, Cradell cried out in alarm. 

“Sir Vivian — sir! It’s worse than what my lady said! 

. . . You’ve been hurt! Shall I send for the doctor?” 

“He is with us!” came the hoarse reply, and Cradell, 
peering out into the chill, gathering darkness, saw a 
strange carriage drawn up before the door, whose lamps 
threw a yellow reflection on the clouds of steam rising 
from the flanks of a pair of jaded horses. They were 
busy about the door; something was being lifted out? 
What? asked the old servant’s shaking lips dumbly. 

“Drove in from Greystoke . . . hospital carriage. . . . 
Send the men to help. . . . Get me some brandy,” came 
from Sir Vivian in hoarse shaking tones. “I can’t . . . 
my arm . . . dislocated, that’s all. I wish to Heaven 

” His face expressed the nature of the wish, and 

the old butler cried with spirit, as he brought the brandy 
from the dining-room. “You should be thankful, sir, that 
you’ve been spared to her!” 

“Spared to — her?” 

The decanter clinked against the glass. Sir Vivian set 
it down upon the tray, and turned a white, seamed face 
and haggard eyes upon Cradell. 

“Spared to my lady, sir, God bless her!” the old ser- 
vant said. “Your hand shakes sadly; let me pour the 
brandy out.” 

Sir Vivian laughed, or made a grimace of laughter, 
showing his teeth and stretching his pale lips. 


HOW THE MISTRESS CAME HOME 209 

‘‘Lord, sir! don’t look like that!” Cradell begged. 
“Think if her ladyship were to see you ! She ” 

“If her ladyship were to see me!” repeated Sir Vivian. 
He drank off a glass of brandy and laughed again. “Cra- 
dell — are you mad, or am I?” 

“Neither of us, sir, I hope!” said Cradell. Then a light 
broke upon him, and he cried, “Good gracious. Sir Vivian, 
is it possible that you don’t know . . . my lady is here?” 

“I know it.” An awful agony was expressed in Sir 
Vivian’s face. “I know it too well!” Great drops stood 
upon his forehead; he turned aside, clenching his hand, 
and fighting for self-command. 

“She came half an hour ago,” began the butler. “Me 
and Mrs. Ansdey were quite took aback. Mrs. Ansdey is 
upstairs with her ladyship now. . . .” 

“Man — man!” cried Sir Vivian, “do you know what 
you are saying?” 

He turned his streaming face upon the frightened but- 
ler and gripped him by the arm, fiercely. 

“Lady Wroth — my wife, she is dead! There was an ac- 
cident — she was killed instantaneously, with little pain, 
thank God! They said so at the Greystoke Hospital. 

. . . She is outside — there!” He pointed a shaking hand 
toward the partly open hall-door, through which a pale 
line of moonlight came stealing as the careful, measured 
tread of men carrying a precious burden sounded on the 
stone. “Yet you say to me — she arrived half an hour 
ago! You are raving — or I am delirious!” 

For answer the butler pointed to the velvet mantle 
trimmed with costly sables that lay upon the floor. 

“It’s heaven’s truth. Sir Vivian! And there lies the 
proof! . . . and here is Mrs. Ansdey to confirm it.” 

Both men looked up as the portly figure in its rustling 
black silken robes hurried down the great staircase. 


SIO HOW THE MISTRESS CAME HOME 


*‘Sir Vivian! Oh, welcome home, Sir Vivian, a thou- 
sand times I The housekeeper’s face was very pale, her 
hands worked nervously, crumpling her fine lace apron. 
*^But something dreadful has happened! it’s written in 
your face!” she cried, “and God forgive a sinful woman, 
but I am beginning to believe that I have spoken with a 
spirit!” 

“Cradell tells me that ” Sir Vivian made an up- 

ward gesture. 

“It’s true,” cried Mrs. Ansdey. “Her ladyship — if 
’twas her ladyship — explained that you were delayed. 
Someone was killed in the railway accident ” 

“Someone was killed!” 

“And you were coming on after you had seen to the 
wounded. . . . She — she would not eat, or drink, or rest; 
she wished — all she wished was to see the house, and I 
obeyed, and we went through room after room until — 
there was a ring at the hall-door bell, and a knocking, 
and I toned to speak to my lady as we stood together in 
the painted chamber — and she was gone ! Oh, Sir Vivian, 
what does it all mean?” cried Mrs. Ansdey. 

“It means — that!” 

As the hall-door opened to admit the bearers with their 
precious burden, and as the men laid that cold, lovely, 
smiling image of Death reverently on the settle, the 
bloodhound wakened from his slumber and rising, uttered 
a long plaintive howl. 

“Welcome home, my wife!” said Sir Vivian. “Now 
please to leave us here together!” 

So the servants and the bearers withdrew. 

“It was the same face!” Mrs. Ansdey whispered, as 
her faithful old comrade led her away. “Why did she 
come?” 


HOW THE MISTRESS CAME HOME ^11 


Cradell said: ^^Because she’d made up her mind to — 
and she was a woman! There’s two answers in one!” 

He stooped mechanically to pick up the sable-trimmed 
mantle that had lain upon the floor. No hand had 
touched it, but it was no longer there. 


THE MOTOR-BURGLAR 


A Development of the Age op Petrol 
QUITE remarkable case of coincidence, dear fel- 



lars — a parallel without precedent,” said Ham- 
bridge Ost to a select circle of listeners in the smoking- 
room of the Younger Sons’ Club, ^‘is that the giant plate- 
burglary successfully accomplished at Lord Whysdale’s 
shooting-box in Deershire on Tuesday last by a party of 
three polite persons traveling in a large, roomy and hand- 
somely-appointed pale blue ‘Flygoer’ automobile, was 
echoed, so to put it — on Friday by a colossal robbery at 
the seat of my cousin. Lord Pomphrey; the defrauding 
persons being also, in that case, a trio of civil-spoken 
and well-dressed strangers, occupying a light-green 
^Runhard’ of twenty-eight horse-power with a limousine 
body and singularly brilliant nickel fittings. The most 
remarkable point on one side, and one which has given 
cause for the noisy derision of the profanum vulgus — 
do you fuller me? — being that Lord Pomphrey — I regret 
to add — assisted and abetted by the humble individual 
now speaking, actually assisted the thieves to get clear 
off with his property, includin’ an Elizabethan beaker 
with a cover, out of which the Virgin Monarch graciously 
quaffed a nightcap of the cordial called ffambswooP when 
staying at The Towers during a Royal progress in the 
year 1566, and a silver tea-kettle and pimch-bowl pre- 
sented by the tenants on the late Earl’s coming-of-age, 
with a cargo of other valuables, out of which I had the 


212 


THE MOTOR-BURGLAR ^13 

melancholy privilege of rescuing one Queen Anne Apostle 
spoon. 

“My cousin Wosbric, between attacks of his hereditary 
gout, is an ardent golfer. Residing at his Club during the 
absence of Lady Pomphrey and the family in the Tyrol, 
he takes every feasible opportunity of cultivating his skill 
and renewing his enthusiasm for the game, the intricacies 
of which, dear fellars, I may own I have never been able 
to master. To me, when a large, cheerful, whiskered 
man, dressed in shaggy greenish clothes, with gaiters, an- 
nounces, rubbing his hands, which are invariably encased 
in woolen mitts, that he has taken his driver twice going 
to the twelfth hole; did not altogether mishit either shot, 
and yet was not up to the green, because the wind bore 
down like a Vanguard omnibus; — to me nothing wildly 
incredible or curious has been said. The large man in the 
shaggy clothes is talking a shibboleth I do not and never 
could understand, dear fellars, if I bent my whole intelli- 
gence — considered by some decent judges not altogether 
contemptible — to the task, until the final collapse of the 
present Social System. But, nevertheless. Lord Pom- 
phrey is partial to the company of this humble indi- 
vidual upon his golfing days, and to me the Head of my 
House — d^e foller me? — in mentioning a preference 
issues a mandate. Enveloped in a complete golfing cos- 
tume of Jaeger material, surmounted by two fur-lined 
overcoats, the pockets of the under one containing two 
patent ^keep-hot’ bottles of warm and comforting liquids 
— coffee and soup — which aid to maintain the tempera- 
ture of the outer man at normal, before being transferred 
to the inner individual — I manage to defy the rigors of 
the English climate and support the exhaustion conse- 
quent upon indulgence in the national game of North 
Britain. My walking-stick is convertible into a camp- 


THE MOTOR-BURGLAR 


stool; the soles of my thick boots are protected by 
goloshes, a peaked cap with flaps for the ears crowns my 
panoply; and, place in the mouth of the individual thus 
attired one of Dunhill’s ^AsorbaP cigarettes, each of 
which is furnished with a patent hygienic mouthpiece- 
filter which absorbs the deleterious oil of nicotine, and 
catches the stray particles of tobacco — d’ye foller me, 
dear fellars? — which otherwise find their way into the 
system of the smoker — and the picture is complete. 

“The run by road from the Club doorsteps to Cluck- 
ham Pomphrey, where the Fargey Common Golf-links 
equal any that our country can boast, faithful copies of 
the eighteen best holes in the world having been carefully 
made under the supervision of Lord Pomphrey — the run 
can be made within four hours. We started. I had re- 
ceived the Fiery Cross from my kinsman, so to put it, in 
a laconic note, running: ‘Golf to-morrow if the weather 
keeps up and the gout keeps down. — Yours, Pomphrey.’ 
We started in a mild drizzle, at six-thirty. Our car, a 
‘Rusher,’ of twenty-six horse-power, with a detachable 
top and glass driving-screen, behaved excellently. Driv- 
ing through Cluckham, our county town — it happened to 
be market-day! — we accidentally converted a lamb into 
cutlets; but the immolated creature, as it chanced, being 
the property of one of my cousin’s farmer-tenants, the 
casualty passed over with fewer comments than generally 
ensue. Bowing to several well-known yeomen and 
county land-holders, my cousin and myself alighted at 
the Pink Boar, kept by an old retainer of the family, 
took a light but nourishing ante-luncheon or snack of a 
couple of raw eggs beaten up with whisky, and proceeded 
on our way to the Fargey Common Links. 

“A mile from The Towers, whose picturesque battle- 
ments could be descried, dear fellars, embosomed, as it 


THE MOTOR-BURGLAR 


215 


were, in surroundin^ trees, we encountered some motorists 
upon the road in quite a regrettable plight. Their car, a 
large, light green ^Runhard’ of twenty-eight horse-power, 
was drawn up by the roadside ; — quite an arsenal of tools 
glittered in the wintry rays of the sun, spread out upon 
an india-rubber sheet, and what had occurred was plain 
to the meanest automobiling capacity. A tire had ex- 
ploded after a long, stiff climb of the steep hill, a notable 
feature in our county landscape — the descent of which 
we were about to negotiate. And the spare tire, after 
being attached, had proved to be leaky beyond repair. 

“Fellar-feeling, dear fellars! — would have moved any 
fellar of you to f oiler our example. We raised our hats, 
the three strangers in the ^Runhard^ car politely return- 
ing the salutation ; we offered aid, and met with grateful 
acceptance. Larger than our own locomotive — the ‘Run- 
hard' wheels were of exactly the same diameter — the 
‘Runhard' tires were ‘Fridolines,' like our own. We 
offered our spare tire, it fitted to a miracle. We were 
overwhelmed with the grateful acknowledgments of its 
three polite proprietors. 

“‘You will at least permit me to pay for the tire!' 
pleaded the gentleman who appeared to take the lead. 
As Lord Pomphrey refused, with the courtly wave of the 
hand that distinguishes this thirteenth wearer of the 
coronet, he continued: ‘For you do not know — you never 
can know! — how inestimable a service your lordship has 
rendered us!' 

“Wosbric was known, then. He elevated his eyebrows 
in polite surprise. Not being able to discern the features 
of the strangers behind their cap-masks and goggles, he 
could not recall ever having met them before. Then the 
second polite stranger, who was even more polite than the 
first, explained in a slight American accent the reason of 


216 


THE MOTOR-BURGLAR 


his companion’s recognition of Lord Pomphrey. ^We 
have, like many other tourists,’ he said, ^recently enjoyed 
the privilege of going over your lordship’s antique and 
noble family pile. In the hall, the feudal stateliness of 
which especially appealed to me as an American citizen, 
hangs a portrait of your lordship taken, in company with 
a gold-hilted sword and a red velvet curtain, as Lord- 
Lieutenant of the County.’ 

“Lord Pomphrey bowed. ^As Lord-Lieutenant of the 
County,’ I put in. ^Quite so. The likeness is agreed to 
be a striking one. And as you have viewed the other 
treasures of The Towers, I presume you did not miss the 
large oak cabinet of Jacobean silver plate — magnificent 
and unique as having belonged to Queen Anne of Den- 
mark — which stands at the end of the smaller library 
behind the large Chinese screen?’ 

“The polite strangers looked at me and then at Lord 
Pomphrey and then at each other. A cloud passed over 
the bright intelligent eyes that shone through their 
motor-goggles as they sorrowfully shook their heads. 

“‘We missed that cabinet!’ said the first polite 
stranger, with a sigh. 

“ T guess we did!’ said the second. 

“‘Just like wot I calls our beastly, blooming luck!’ 
sighed the third stranger who was sitting in the car, and 
who, though polite, was not in the least a refined sort of 
person. As all three of them seemed unfeignedly de- 
pressed, Lord Pomphrey, who is the soul of hospitality, 
begged them to return to The Towers, accept refresh- 
ment, and examine under his personal superintendence, 
the magnificent contents of the oak cabinet in the second 
library. 

“‘We thank your lordship profoundly!’ said the first 


THE MOTOR-BURGLAR 


217 


polite stranger, bowing, ‘but we are unable to accept your 
invitation!’ He bowed again, and got into J-he car. 

“ ‘And we shall never cease to regret, I guess,’ said the 
second, ‘that we have missed the most valuable item of 
your lordship’s collection of silver heirlooms. But we 
have garnered many precious mementos’ — it struck me 
at that moment that there were a great many waterproof- 
covered bundles in the ‘Runhard’ car, and as he spoke he 
patted one of these affectionately — ‘of our visit to this 
country which must serve to sweeten life for us when we 
are far away. And with these we must endeavor to be 
content!’ 

“He too bowed, dear fellars, and got into the car. The 
machinery began to splutter at a touch upon the lever. 

“‘Let ’er rip. Cocky,’ advised the third stranger; ‘we 
ain’t got none too much of a start with this yere tire 
a-busting. So long!’ he said, and like an arrow from a 
bow, so to put it, dear fellars, the large, light green ‘Run- 
hard’ leapt forward and was out of sight in an instant. 
We proceeded in the ‘Rusher’ toward our destination. 

“Presently, dear fellars, we met two large, hot, county 
constables on bicycles. They did not recognize us, so 
great was their haste. Their large boots vigorously trod 
the pedals, their bulky, blue-uniformed figures were 
crouched over the handle-bars as they pounded up the 
hill from Cluckham Pomphrey. We wondered whither 
they might be going? We questioned what agricultural 
breach of the peace, what local felony, had spurred them 
to such an unusual display of energy. We found out. 

“For at the next bend of the road, dear fellars, we 
encountered quite a little cavalcade of hot and red-faced, 
or pale and panting persons. The steward from Pom- 
phrey Towers in his T-cart, the head bailiff from Pom- 
phrey Towers on his cob, the coachman driving a light 


^18 


THE MOTOR-BURGLAR 


gig with two armed grooms on the back seat, an excited 
mob of stable-helpers and gardeners straggling along be- 
hind. . . . Even before they recognized us, those in the 
van of the pursuers shouted to us, asking if we had 
passed an automobile upon the road — a large, light green 
‘Runhard’ containing three men? 

^'In a few gasped sentences, dear fellars, the ghastly 
truth stood revealed; the facts were laid bare to us. 
Pomphrey Towers had been, to employ the expression of 
the bailiff, ^cracked and burgled,’ only an hour previ- 
ously, of a quantity of silver articles and a mass of valu- 
able plate. Lord Pomphrey and myself had met the 
burglars upon the road, had supplied them with the 
means of continuing their flight, had entered into con- 
versation with them, and returned their polite farewells. 

“We joined the pursuit, all thoughts of golf submerged 
in the bosom of Lord Pomphrey, beneath the boiling 
lava-flood of rage and indignation. To be robbed is bad; 
to be placed in the position of confederate to the robbers, 
unknowing aider and abettor of their nefarious flight, is 
maddening. The three polite individuals in the large, 
light green motor-car have not, up to the present, been 
traced. One small spoon of the Apostle-headed kind, 
found by the roadside where they replaced their own de- 
flated tire, with that so generously bestowed upon them 
by Lord Pomphrey, is the only clue so far. 

“A distressin’ experience, dear fellars! — confoundedly 
so in the estimation of this humble individual. Thanks, 
I will take another of those long Dutch cigars and a 
Scotch, with Hebinaris’ — ^the new mineral water, do you 
f oiler me? — ^with iridescent bubbles that snap at your 
nose. My love to you, dear fellars, and a Happy New 
Year!” 


THE LOST ROOM 


T hey were going to part at last — to separate quietly, 
but formally — after a married life of nearly three 

years. 

There was no Other Woman, even she was quite sure 
of that; there wasn’t even the shadow of another man. 
He rather wished there were, with a good solid six-foot 
personality to project it. He was so confoundedly tired 
of conjugal life. 

He had an old historic title, a large estate unencum- 
bered by the prodigalities of ancestors, unhampered by 
his own. She had inherited from an American mother a 
large fortune and some of the biggest jewels Tiffany had 
ever set. Their tastes were similar, their constitutions 
robust, their tempers strong and healthy, their tempera- 
ments ardent and enthusiastic, their moral and mental 
temperatures since the last decisive meeting between the 
trustees of her property and his family lawyers had been 
slowly descending to normal. Never, oh, never would 
either of them put their heads again, they were deter- 
mined, into the noose of marriage! even if a decree nisi 
should ever make it possible. Because naturally, as time 
went on, she would meet somebody she liked, he thought. 
. . . Because men were so constituted, reflected she, that 
if a woman only told one of them often enough that he 
was in love with her, he would begin to believe it. 

They had used up all their capability for passion, de- 
votion, and so on, during their romantic wooing, their 

219 


220 


THE LOST ROOM 


short but divinf, engagement, and the incandescent eight 
weeks’ honeymoon that had followed the wedding. They 
wanted to forget the world then, and be alone together; 
and they got what they wanted, one April, one May, in 
that great old granite-built pepper-box turreted Scotch 
mansion on the banks of the silver Tweed. 

It was heavenly, or at the very least Paradisaical. 
They wanted it to be quite an old-fashioned honeymoon, 
so they did not go down by motor, but by the Euston 
express. Ten hours of traveling, and then they got out 
at a little gray station of a little Scots town with a dread- 
ful tweed-factory in it whose dye and grease terribly 
defiled the silvery river reaches, and does so to this day — 
and drove through lovely woods of larch and birch and 
hawthorn, just breaking into green leaf, to Mary house, 
the cradle of the race from which she sprang, the un- 
happy lovely Queen — whose great wrought gates of 
rusted iron, with the Stuart shield of arms in faded gold 
and crimson and blue, would never be unlocked again 
until a Stuart should reign once more upon the throne of 
England. 

The great avenue had been turned into park, and you 
reached the house by the lesser way. It had a square 
courtyard, closed by another pair of great wrought gates, 
and bears with ragged staves were on the pillars, and 
even held up the antique scraper at the low-browed door, 
and the knocker was the tiniest bear of all. There were 
no rooms to some of the four hundred casements that 
winked out of the lichened walls. You pulled the bear- 
handle of the house-bell, and it clanged up high out of 
sight somewhere among the twisted chimneys and the 
great slants of stone-tiled roof studded with pinky house- 
leek and gay with yellow moss. 

Then the low, square, iron-studded door had opened, 


THE LOST ROOM 


^21 


and two people had gone in, to commence, among the 
tragic relics of vanished, forgotten existences, their own 
new life together. Perhaps some sorrowful shadow of 
failure and disillusion had fallen upon them from those 
old gray walls. A week before they went there a piece 
of paneling had fallen from the wall in the great hall, 
revealing in a niche behind it a skull, and what else Time 
had left of the man who had suffered such a tragic end- 
ing. 

As I have said, the Deed of Separation had been 
formally signed by both parties, their trustees and law- 
yers. She was beautifully free. She sang a little song as 
her motor- victoria ran her homeward to the house which 
he had no right to enter now, and she ordered the touring 
limousine to be at the door very early in the morning 
before she ran upstairs. 

She was as gay as possible. She told her maid, as she 
hummed the “Dream Waltz,’’ to have a cabin trunk and 
a bag packed. Only these, because she would be back in 
a week. She was only going to visit some old great, 
quiet people in an old great, quiet house up North, who 
had been very fond of society in their time, but now 
never even dressed for dinner. She meant the fair mur- 
dered Scots’ Queen and the Kings who had dwelt at 
Maryhouse, of course. 

“Fancy that, my lady!” said the maid, thanking her 
own stars that she was not to accompany her mistress. 
Many silken calves and much company above and below 
stairs constituted the waiting-woman’s ideal of Life. 

Well, the itinerary of the Great North road — that 
would take too long. Behind the glass screen she sat, 
swathed in her sables, while the taciturn, clean-shaven 
chauffeur made England spin by. She chose her own 
road, the collieries were left behind in their smoke, the 


222 


THE LOST ROOM 


ruins of St. Oswald’s Chapel of Ease were passed, stand- 
ing gray and battered on their battle-site. Serving- 
shields, where under the enchanted hall sleep Arthur and 
his Knights, she saw before she lost the vision. She 
slept at Carlisle, and went on next morning to Peebles, 
where Needpath elevates its single fang above the sal- 
mon pool. 

And so to Maryhouse, not even a telegram having been 
sent ahead of her. She knew her dear friends, the own- 
ers of the place, were still abroad. But there was always 
Mistress Dumphie, the old, old lady-housekeeper, who 
had been born and reared and wooed and married, too, at 
Maryhouse. Mistress Dumphie would take her in for a 
night, and if not — there was an inn in the ugly little 
weaving village. The great limousine rolled through the 
gates of the smaller avenue and over the bridge of the 
Arbalestiers Tower, and stopped before the great, rusty 
crowned gates of the sunny courtyard. 

The larks were singing. The Quhair brook ran under 
the hazel-banks. Oh ! what sweet quiet after the roar of 
Paris and London and the dust of the roads. 

The rusty chain was pulled, the great bell clanged on 
the side of a pepper-box turret ever so high overhead. 
Mistress Dumphie, in her morn’s merino and black net 
cap, appeared behind the rusty grille. 

“Quid preserve ’s a’! It’s the young lord’s leddy !” she 
said. 

The ^^young lord’s leddy” came in. She was to stay. 
The chauffeur went back to the hotel. 

feel as though I should find something here,” said 
the “young lord’s leddy,” “something that I have lost 
somehow. It is very odd!” 

She wandered about the beautiful old house all the 
rest of the day. 


THE LOST ROOM 


223 


^‘Here is the great oak window-seat where we used to 
sit together. Here is the little stone parlor where we 
quarreled and made it up. Here is the vast tapestried 
chamber, with the faded Stuart portraits on the walls, 
that was my bedroom; and this smaller room, with the 
acorn-shaped stone mullions and the ebony and tulip 
wood furniture, was hisF^ 

What fine days they had spent in those daisied ave- 
nues, under those huge oaks. What wet ones under the 
old painted, diapered ceilings. The wettest of all they 
had spent in looking for the Lost Room. 

The Lost Room was a chamber that everybody knew 
of, but nobody ever discovered. Counting from outside, 
you could be sure there was an extra window, but go 
where you would about the hushed mysterious house, you 
never opened a door that led into the Lost Room. 

She supped in a little dining-parlor that those dead 
Queens had used before her. She went to bed in the 
tapestried room. She slept well and woke in the middle 
of the night with a great bell clanging in her ears. She 
could not sleep after that. Lights dickered before her 
shut eyes in the darkness. 

“I did hear a step on the staircase! I did hear the 
shutting of a door!” she said to herself, and got out of 
the great bed on the dais and put warm slippers on her 
white little naked feet, and threw on a dressing-gown 
lined with unborn Persian lambskin — such a cruel idea, 
you know, but very fashionable. And she took her elec- 
tric torch, and unlocked the door noiselessly, and stepped 
out boldly into the wide, dusky corridor. 

She trod upon something soft, and repressed a scream. 
She held the light downward and picked up a man's dog- 
skin glove. 

“Ah, now I know that I am dreaming!” she said quite 


THE LOST ROOM 


224 < 

cheerfully. She need not be afraid of mice or rats, be- 
cause she knew that she was all the time lying in bed in 
the big tapestried room. As for ghosts, she wanted to see 
one frightfully — always had. 

The door of the room that had been his was just op- 
posite. Something made her go in, on her noiseless 
dream-feet, carrying the dream-glove in her hand. The 
dream went on quite as dreams usually do. She had gone 
back to the sweet old half-forgotten honeymoon time. 

“This is the night on which we had tiffed, and I was the 
first to make it up!’’ She smiled and went in. It was 
just as she had expected. There he lay, fast asleep in the 
big tapestry-hung bed. 

She went up to the side of it, and pulled back the cur- 
tain without waking him, and sat down, shading the 
light from the dear, handsome, manly face, and devour- 
ing it with famished eyes. This was what she had come 
seeking; some glamour of the old time; some sweet re- 
membrance unspoiled by anything that had happened 
since. 

The jars, the disagreements, the quarrels had never 
happened. . . . She was back in the old times, and he 
was not yet regretting his lost freedom, but tightening 
the bond a little closer every day by words and deeds of 
love. 

This was the Lost Room, this dream-chamber where 
he lay. She was glad to have come down to Maryhouse 
for this. Who would not take a journey to find your old 
self and your old self’s self at the end of it, and Love 
lying sleeping in the shadow of dear memories, ready to 
be wakened with a kiss? 

She stooped and gave the kiss. He started and awak- 
ened. He stared at her, and the light of the old joy 
leaped into his eyes. 


THE LOST ROOM 


225 


“Alice! You’re only a dream, I know, but it is better 
than the real Alice, who grew to hate me. Oh ! put your 
arms round me again! let me have your heart on mine 
again; let both of us forget what a ruin we have made 
of the life that we set out to make so sweet and fair!” 

He caught her hands. The torch fell with a crash, and 
went out. The dark was full of light, and warm, throb- 
bing memories, and they were one again. Just for a 
little while, only in a dream. . . . 

But day came through the diamond casements, laugh- 
ing, and hand in hand with Hope. There were tears and 
laughter in her train. Two real people. No dream 
after all. 

He had wanted to look at Maryhouse again, and had 
traveled down in the express from Euston, hours after 
she had started. It was he who had rung the bell in the 
night. 

Mistress Dumphie had let him in and given him 
supper, and lighted the old room for him. He had 
thought there was a curious twinkle in her eye. 

The Deed of Separation, now waste-paper, may be had 
on application, by any young, wealthy couple who are 
desirous, upon a sensible arrangement, to part. 


FATHER TO THE MAN 


Being a Confidential Letter from the Right Hon. Vis- 
count Tynstone, at the Rev. 0. Gotohed^s, Eton 
College^ to the Lady Mary Cliffe-Bradlay, ooo Wes- 
sex Street, Park Lane, W. 

Good Old Poll, — 

It is awfully nice of you to be so fritefully sick about 
it — i. e., my Getting Swished this Half, but fellows 
get Hardened to these things at School. Hemming major 
says there is something in a rotten poetry-book about a 
Divinity that shapes our Ends. I expect the beggar who 
wrote it was trying to get round the Head for his own 
Reesons. Your simpathy about the Ladies’ Plate is cum- 
forting, but the Eton Eight must give other Crews a 
chance sumtimse. So everyboddy says, and as far as 
stile went our Fellowse boddies were better under con- 
trole, and the whole Appearanse of the Rowing was up 
to the best traddishunse of Eton. No. 7, Biggly-Wade, 
presenting a beautiful example of rithm and elastissity; 
and Henson No. 4, simply being a Tower of strength. 
N. B., he is Captain of my Tutor’s and Has licked me 
awfully several timse, so I am in a pusition to Judge. 

While the Thames Cup was being slogged for I made 
up my mind to Sacrifise myself for the good of my Fam- 
maly, and drop into Lunch with Mr. and Mrs. Le Moser, 
those Millionaire Friends of Mother’s, who she said were 
such Howling Cads, and so anxhus to know me. They 
Had an A.l. Motor-Launch, sedar-built, with plated fit- 
tingse and with salloons 4 and aft, and Green Awnings 
226 


FATHER TO THE MAN 




second on the Bucks side 2 Private Lawns billow the 
Kingston Rowing Club. There were Moundse of Flow- 
ers, and though lots of other awfully smart launches filled 
up the First Section of the Bank before the Houseboats 
Began, where you, and Mother, and the Girls were on 
Uncle Todmore’s Roulette, the Le Moser craft collared 
the bikker for sumshuous splender. Regger minor of my 
house, who is quite an awfully Brilliant umorist, made 
an eppigram about the general Swellness of boats and 
launches billonging to people like the Le Moser’s. He 
said: ^^On the Berks side there are piles only, and no 
Booms. On the Bucks side there are both Boomse and 
Piles.” 

Regger was so awfully Pleased with himself for saying 
such a clever Remark that I Had to Kick him to Tone 
Him down. He is Fritefully litterary and Artistic, be- 
cause his Father Has just Bought a Weakly Illustrated 
Journal, and He is to Eddit it when He leaves Oxford; 
and the Things he said about the akwatic Fairy Palaces 
bineath the Pine treese and the Green-clad Hilly Vista, 
kombining to make up a Picture uneek in its English 
beauty, and without Paralel in the sivilised World were 
like hearing bitts read out of some Rotten Newspaper the 
day after the Rigatta. 

I had Not Had much Brekker, bicause our Boys’ Maid 
is quite awfully spoons on Henson No. 4 of the Eight, 
and forgetse where she has Hidden the Knives and 
Forkse to kepe Other Fellows from getting at Them. I 
Found them in my Cricket Pads after I had Eaten eggs 
and Sausages with my Fingers like one of those Pre- 
historick Beggers with Stone Hatchets. So the Hospi- 
tallity of the Le Mosers was ixtremely Welcome. Mrs. 
Le Moser was Frightfully Civil. She Had Diamond 
buttons on a White Reefer Jacket, and Rows and Rows 


228 


FATHER TO THE MAN 


of pearls as big as Sparrows’ eggse. A White Gangway, 
railed with gilt chains on posts with gilt Knobs, led to a 
Markay on Shore, which was Decorated as a Medievil 
Banqueting Hall, and there was a Footman in the Le 
Moser livery behind everybody’s chair. The Dalmatian 
Band and the Castillian Minstrels Played, and it was an 
awfully ripping lunchon, with everything you could think 
of to Eat and Drink and lots more bissides. There were 
4,000 Pot plants on Board, and when it Got Dark the 
Fairy Litse looked awfully fine. 

Mr. Le Moser was a ripping good Host, though his 
waistcoat and necktie were frightfully loud, and he wares 
his Nails as long as the front ends of a Pair of Swedish 
Skates. N. B., Perhaps it is to Rake in the Money with? 
He told me that my Distinguished Father’s Name was 
Down as One of the Directors of His New Company, and 
that He Hoped to have Mine in a Few Years. He said 
the Risponsibilities of Rank were fritefully tremendous, 
and never seemed to Notice how I kept Slogging into the 
Champagne. He told me to keep the Cigarretts biside 
me, and offered me a Partagga in a glass case, price 8s. 
6d., which I expect comes to a frightfully big price for a 
box of 100. I acsepted the luxurious Weed, but Did Not 
Smoak it. (N. B., I have got it now, and Regger, who 
has been swotting Pericles this half for English Classics, 
calls it “a glorious casket stored with ill.” I can’t think 
what makes him.) 

After everybody was stodged we went on Board the 
launch, and Miss Le Moser — Mother is quite rite about 
her being a pretty girl, though her Pater and Mater are 
such awful form, and her Pater doesn’t know how to stop 
talking about the money he has Bagged on the Stock 
Ixchange, and in other Places, the Diamond Mines in 
South Africa particularly. A chap in the Guards who 


FATHER TO THE MAN 


229 


was on the launch said it was a well-developed case of 
I. D. B., but Forgot to tell me what the Letters ment. 
He said, ‘‘Josie would carry the pile’' (Josie is Miss Le 
Moser), and that if I was a sensible young beggar, and 
not a rotten Ass, I would see where my own advantidge 
lay even before I left School for Sandhurst. He went on 
about an infusion of Radical blood being a good thing 
to mingel with the ancient Tory blue, and rather Valu- 
able than otherwise to one’s descendents, and said that 
to win a young and distinctly decently-looking wife with 
a hundred and eighty thousand jimmies in her wedding 
nightcap would be getting the Grand Slam in mattri- 
mony. I cheeked him a bit and asked him if he had 
Praktised what he jolly well preached, and he twisted his 
mustash and said: ^‘Unfortunately, no, young ’un; as 
like a Good many other fellows, I Came under the Mar- 
ried Women’s propperty Act before I was eighteen.” 

Then he pointed out a weedy, long-legged Beggar with 
the ghost of a red mustash and fritefully swagger 
clothes, who was making himself tremendously nice to 
Josie Le Moser, and said he was the Son of Mr. Joyd 
Lorge’s privite Secretary and an enfant gdtdy of the 
Liberal Government, with a seat in the Lower House 
being kept warm for him until he should come of age, 
and a lot more, ending up by asking me if I was driving 
an Automobile and saw a Dog trying to Bite through 
one of my Tyres, what I should do to the dog? I said I 
should Drive over it, of course, which seemed to pleese 
him frightfully, for he tipped me a sov, and then winked 
towards the Fellow who was showing his teeth at Miss 
Le Moser and said, “Then, there’s the Dog, don’t you 
know!” and went off to talk to a frightfully swell woman 
who called him to come over to her. I should rathei 
like to be like that Guardsman when I go into the Army. 


230 


FATHER TO THE MAN 


His name is Gerald, for I heard the lady call him by it; 
he is Lord Dennismore, and he was so jolly Respectful 
and attentive to the lady, who wore quite a lot of vales 
and had heaps of golden hair, though she was quite old, 
and a tremendously red and white Complection, and a 
front figure that rinkled and bulged when she stooped 
or sat down, that I thought she must be his Mother, until 
Mrs. Le Moser told me she was the Duchess of Rinkhorn 
and his great friend. What I said about the Duchess 
being his mother seemed to amuse Mrs. Le Moser like 
mad, for I Heard her tell quite a lot of people, and they 
All yelled, as if I had been trying to be funny, which I 
was Not. 

She told me lots more About Lord Dennismore, which 
made me feel beastly proud of his having talked to me, 
and given me Advice. He was out with his battalion in 
the South African War, and did splendid thingse at the 
Front, and got speshally mentioned in Despatches, after 
Jaegersfontein and for Rescewing twenty wounded Tom- 
mies who had fallen in the Grass which the liddite from 
the shells had set on fire — I think it was liddite. And 
he got potted in the Shoulder, and was getting quite fit 
again, and would have done a lot more fiting if the 
Duchess hadn’t come out in a Speshul Hospital ship and 
carried him back “to England, Home and Duty,” as a 
lady who was listening to Mrs. Le Moser put in. I think 
it was jolly mean of the Duchess, don’t you? As if a 
chap could be properly grateful for being muffed like 
that! I forgot to say that Lord Denismore, when a little 
chap, was Father’s fag at school, and used to field for 
him when stump cricket in the passage in wet weather 
first came in. And he. Lord Denismore, was picked to 
Play in the School Eleven when he was still only a Lower 
Boy, and was Captain for a half before he left. And I 


FATHER TO THE MAN 


231 


feel awfuly Glad I met him, but I wonder why he said 
that about coming under the Married Women’s Property 
Act before he was eighteen? There is a Duke of Rink- 
horn, who goes about in a Bath Chair with a Nurse in a 
white cap and apron to feed him and blow his nose when 
it wants it, so Perhaps the Duchess is the married woman 
he meant after all. 

I must say Josie Le Moser seemed to like me talking 
to her and explaining things more than she seemed to 
when the weedy chap with the ghost of a red mustash 
was trying to. After the phinal of the Diamonds, when 
the Crowds began to thin, and later when the Twilite 
caine down and the Nats came out, and the Le Moser’s 
launch and their markay were elluminated up with about 
twice as many Fairy Lites as anybody else had, and the 
Castillian Minstrils played splendidly on their manda- 
lins, I began to think her an awfully pretty girl. I don’t 
believe it was the creme de Menth her Pater had made 
me have with my coffy after Lunch and the Champagne, 
or the Russian rum they sent round in little dekanters, 
with the five o’clock tea, because the fellows say my 
Head is frightfully strong. But I got her hand and 
squeezed it a lot of times, and whenever the sucking 
M. P. edged a word in, and he tried to keep in Josie’s 
pocket the Most of the time, I wanted to fit him, and I 
think He guessed it from my Manner. He let Out He 
had been Edducated by Private Tutors at Home because 
his constitushion was dedicate as a Boy, and I said ^‘Oh!” 
and I think Josie began to feel him rather in the way 
after that. His name is Wenham-Biggs, and I xpect his 
Constitushion is giving him a lot more trouble by now. 

The thing happened like this. I had only leeve till 
7.30, but Mr. Le Moser asked me to stop and Dine, and I 
thought I could work the squash at the Station, and being 


2S2 


FATHER TO THE MAN 


three tranes late for an extra 2 hours so consentid with 
thanx, as it is a Poor Heart that Never rejoices, as Reg- 
ger says. Josie and Me were up in the Bows where there 
is just Room for 2, and Wenham-Biggs was sitting on the 
Steersman’s Box rubbing his chin against the Wheel, to 
make his Beard grow I suppose, and Getting more Sicken- 
ingly Sweet and Centimental in the things He was saying 
to Josie every Minute. I call it Nerve to go on like that 
with another fellow nearly as old as yourself listening to 
every Word. At last he Said he was ready to Die for the 
Woman he Loved — I like that, don’t you? — Whenever 
she asked the sacrafice, and I said it would be the Leest 
he could Do, if she had an objection to a red mustash. 
It must be being so much with Regger makes me bat off 
these Things I xpect. Wenham-Biggs was perfeckly 
wild, and Josie giggled so mutch that she Forgot she was 
Close to the Edge and the Rubber mat slipped or some- 
thing, the Launch being polished like a Looking Glass, 
and she went plump into the River, and it is pretty Deep 
on the Bucks side, and there is a good deal of Streem. 

I was Glad of all the Swimmers I had gone in for at 
Cuckoo Weir. I was Beestly sorry about my Swagger 
Flannelse and my new colors I had sported for the 1st 
time; but of corse I had to go in after Josie and thogh 
I don’t suppose I showed much skill. People made an 
awful Row, crowding to the Bullarks, and throwing life- 
boys and cork fenders at us like ennything. Mr. Le 
Moser kept offering rewards in lbs. and making it ginnies, 
and Mrs. Le Moser had histerrics in Lord Dennismore’s 
arms, which shows she was not quite unconshus because 
He was the best-bread and best-looking man of the 
Launch-party. 

What price your Little Brother when Me and Josie 
were Hauled up into the Launch all over pslime and 


FATHER TO THE MAN 


2SS 


Duckweed. Everybody Shook Hands with Me and said 
things that Made me Tingal all Over, and all the Women 
kept kissing Josie who they took away and put to Bed. 
Mr. Le Moser lent me a Change of his Thingse. 0 
crumbs! if you Had seen me in them ispeshally the 
Wastecoat and the etsetras with stripes down the Legs. 
And he rote me a letter to Take back to my Tutor, and 
left it ungummed. And the things He said about my 
Pluck and Daring and his Eternal obbligation made me 
feel quite Shy when I read them going back in the last 
trane. There were two other Lower Boys in the carriage, 
and besidse them, a Fellow of my house who is One of the 
Swells of the Sixth Form, who was awfully annoyed at 
being obbliged to travel with us. 

The Butler was sitting up for us at my tutor’s, and 
everyone Else in Bed, as it was past 12, when we Got 
Back, but beyond a Slite Cold in my Head the Risults 
of the Outing were Not Paneful, my Letter putting 
Things in an awfully good light, which made the Other 
Fellows rather envious thogh they were let off with mid- 
ling paenas. 

I Forgot to say Mr. Le Moser tipped me £100, which 
will come in very usefull. Also I am to try and get leave 
to go and Spend the Day at their Place at Staines next 
week, and they will send me Home in one of their motor- 
carse. Xcuse Spelling and mistakes as my Cold is mak- 
ing me Sneaze pretty Frequently, and with love to 
Mother, and all at home. 

Bilie ve me. 

Your loving Brother, 

Toby. 

P.S. — You Never saw a Fellow with plenty of conceat 
and Nerve about Him look as small as Wenham-Biggs 
when Lord Dennismore asked Him why He did not Dive 


234 } 


FATHER TO THE MAN 


in after Josie too, and he Had to own up He Could not 
swim a Stroak. What price private Tutors and being 
Edducated at Home? 

P.P.S. — I saw Josie before I came away, and Mrs. Le 
Moser kissed me, which was horrid, and so did the 
Duchess and Several Other Ladies, and then they told 
Josie to and she did and gave me a little Diamond Duck 
to wear on my watch chane. N.B. — I think I see myself 
doing it and getting fitted by my fagmaster for side. 

T. 

P.P.S.S. — Lord Dennismore neerly rung my hand off 
when I said Good-bye, and said, “You’ve tumbled in for 
a good thing, you lucky little beggar, and I’m % inclined 
to billeve . . .” And then he left off without saying 
What. But he tipped me 3 soverins more, and asked me 
to come and lunch with Him when Next he is on Duty, 
and you bet I said delighted thanks. ... T. 

P.P.P.S.S.S. — ^As my Fagmaster seemed inclined to be 
Nasty about my not getting Up in Time to Fill his Bath 
and make his tost and cofy in the morning I gave Him 
Mr. Le Moser’s 8s. 6d. Partagga in the glass case. First 
he bitt the end of the case off and it neerly choaked Him, 
and then He had a lot of trouble in getting it to Lite, and 
before it was % through he had a lot more trubble of a 
different kind. (N.B. — Ask mother if it would Not be a 
good Thing for me ie. marrying Josie Le Moser when I 
am of Age? I shall be f rite fully poor and she will be 
awfully Rich, so her Father and Mother would not mat- 
ter much. Also it would be Better than coming under the 
Married Women’s Propperty Act at 18, like poor Dennis- 
more!) Tynstone. 


THE FLY AND THE SPIDER 


Being a Confidential Letter from the Right Hon. Vis- 
count Tynstone, on board the Yacht Spindrift/^ 
Cowes Roads, to the Lady Mary Cliff e-Bradlay, 
Silversands Park, Sussex. 

Tuesday, August — . 

Good Old Poll, — 

I thought you were Rotting about Lord Dennis- 
more and the Duchess at the baginning of your Letter, 
but your Locking him up in the Peech House was a Stun- 
ning Lark. The Duchess must Have been in a Regular 
Wax, and He must have been Fritefully Wild, only you 
can’t Hit a Girl, they are so Soft and Go down so Easily. 

Uncle Todmore Has the Usual Yacht Party for the 
Rigatta, and the old Spindrift looks A.l. painted white 
with a new Copper Rail and a New Sett of Lifeboyse, etc. 
I asked Uncle Todmore How Much it had Cost, and He 
Heeved a Sigh, and said sufficient to the Day was the evil 
Thereof, so I xpect it comes to a Lump, and He and Aunt 
Honoria will Have to spend the Winter down at that 
Beestly Place of His in Devonshire instead of Going to 
the Riviara or Egipt this time. 

I said He Had the Usual Party on Board; but there 
are Two New People — a Captain Clanarthur, late of the 
Malta Artillery, a Man who Parts His Hair Down the 
Back, and Wares a Gold Braselet on his Left Wrist, and 
his Wife. Mrs. Clanarthur is a simply Fritefully pretty 
^35 


236 THE FLY AND THE SPIDER 


woman, with Long Black ilashes that Curl at the endse, 
and Eyes you Cant tell the right Colour of, never Being 
the Same Twise Running. Aunt Honoria is a Great 
Friend of Hers. And she Wares a Silver Belt with her 
Ruff weather Serge Gown that was a saint Bernard Dog’s 
Collar — so you may immagine How Small her waste is. 
She says I am a Mear Boy, and Ought Not to Notice 
Such Things; but I shall be Sixteen in September, and 
lots of Our Fellows at My Tutors are in love. Greening 
Minor, Who is a Regular Shrimp, regularly rites verses 
To the Barmade in the Slough Station refreshment room. 
First class — I mean the Refreshment Room, not the 
Verses. One Poem bigins — 

“How Nobly Does Thy Fair Form Tower, 

Whenare I Gaze On Thee. 

I Wish thou Wert a Lilly Flower, 

& I a Hunney Bee.” 

Which is Not Half Bad for a Lower Boy. And Regger is 
Secretly ingaged to his Sisters Jerman Guverness, who is 
30 if a Day. She Has Promised to Wate for Regger, who 
is a Year Older than Me, and simply awfully Divoted to 
Her. She Makes Splendid Gingerbred with Nuts in it, 
which will come in Usefull if Regger’s Pater Cuts Him 
Off with a Shilling. 

Mrs. Clanarthur’s Christian Name is Ermengarde, but 
Her Friends call Her Nini for short. The Divise on Her 
Note Paper is a Gold Spider in a silver Web, and she 
Wares a little Broach with a Diamond Spider in a Gold 
Web. She keeps on Telling me she is Not Young, but 
That must be All Rot, because She is so mutch moar 
Girlish than the 2 Girls on Board. They are the Pope- 
Baggotes, and Lady Jane is Fatter than ever. 


THE FLY AND THE SPIDER 237 


Wednesday. 

I can't Immajin Why Mrs. Clanarthur ever married 
such a regular Scug as Captain Clanarthur, though she 
Says she was a mear Child, and did It to Pleese Her 
Family. They have been 10 Yearse married, so if she 
was so young at the time she cannot be as old as she says 
she is. She says she Had Her Hair Done up and wore 
Long Skirts For the first Time on her Wedding Day, and 
thought more of the Cake and the Presents than what 
was to Come. She cried when she Told me that, after 
dinner on Deck, when an Italian Opera Fellow, whose 
Name I can't spell, was singing Love songs to the Acom- 
paniment of the Mandolin, and the Starse were shining 
more Brightly than I ever remember to Have Seen 
Them. Her Hair has a Scent like Violets, and when Her 
Head Comes Near you it makes you Feel Hot and cold 
and Swimmy — at leest it does Me. Clanarthur was 
Away Racing a Yawl of His at the Royal Portsmouth 
Corinthian Yacht Club Rigatta, and I thoght if He 
should Get Drowned what a Jolly Good thing it would 
Be. He Ought to be Kicked for Making that woman so 
frightfully wretchid when She is 10,000 times Too Good 
For Him. N.B. — Of course She did Not Tell me what 
he has Done, but I bet you % a crown it is sumthing 
Beastly caddish. 

I think the Men on Board a Not very Well Bred Sett, 
as they chaff Me like mad about Mrs. Clanarthur; and 
even when she is Within Earshott, which makes Me want 
Frightfully to Kick them all Round. I Cannot Sleep at 
Night as I used to Do, and my Head Aches in a Beastly 
way in the Morning. I have got a handkerchief of Mrs. 
Clanarthur's I Stole when She was Not Looking, and I 
Keep it Under My Pillow at Night and Switch the illec- 
tric light On and Look at it every Now and Then. There 


238 THE FLY AND THE SPIDER 


is ^‘Nini” imbroidered in the Corner, and it Smells of 
Violets, like her Hair. If I was married to a Lovely 
Woman like that I should not be a Beast like Clanarthur. 
She Told Me that she Never has suffered Him to Kiss 
her on the Lips Since She Knew Him to be Unworthy of 
a Pure Woman's Love. Sumhow I am glad of that, thogh 
it is Rough on Clanarthur. 

Saturday. 

Last Night Sumthing Happened I am Now Going to 
tell you about. They were Throwing Coloured Lites on 
the Sea from the Victoria Pier, and all the Big Steam 
Yachts Had Fairy lamps Hung Out, and the Music of 
the Bands and things Comming Over the Water quite 
made it simply ripping. It was after dinner, and I was 
Sitting on Deck with Mrs. Clanarthur, and She thought 
She would like a Moonlight Pull in the Yacht’s dinghy, as 
the Sea was so Beautifully Smooth. So I tipped two of 
the Spindrift men to get the boat reddy, and not say 
enny thing to ennybody and We Started. There was a 
Fritefully Stiff Tide on. I Rowed Her Round and Down 
a Lane made of Torpedo Gun-boats on One Side and 1st 
Class Cruisers on the other. All Reddy for the King to 
inspect on Saturday. It was Ripping Fun, and Nini was 
Delighted. Then we Drifted dreemily along Towards 
Ryde, and I Forgot there was such a Fritefully Stiff Tide 
Running out to Spithead because I was Holding Nini’s 
Hand — she let me — and thinking there were Worse 
Things than Coming under the Married Women’s Prop- 
erty Act after All. 

When We Had got a Good Distance Out I found I 
could Not Get Back For Nuts, However Hard I Pulled. 

The Perspirashun was Running off me like Water and 
my Arms Ached like Mad. Nini — she had said I might 
call her Nini the Evening Before — Nini Could not See 


THE FLY AND THE SPmER 239 


enny thing was Wrong, but I knew we were being Carried 
Out to Sea at About 100 miles an Hour and it Kept Get- 
ting Darker. N.B. — Of course, I did Not Care For my- 
self, but I Kept Thinking of Nini. She said the Poetry 
of the illimittible Oshan made Her Trill like a Smitten 
Lute, and I said, ^^Does it?” and Kept Slogging Away 
against the Tide without making 1 Not in 1,000 Hours, 
as the Signals in Coes Roads kept getting Smaller. Then 
a Southampton Liner came Rushing out of the Dark. I 
Saw Both her Port and Starboard Litse as I Turned my 
Head, so she must have been Coming Straight down on 
Us. You may Suppose I had Fits, thinking of Mrs. Clan- 
arthur, and I would have tried to Shout, but I Had Lost 
my Wind completely. 

^^How pretty,” said Nini — Mrs. Clanarthur I mean — 
^That must be the Campania for New York from 
Southampton.” And she went on Gassing about the 
Beauty of the Seen without an Idea that we might be cut 
in 2 Next Minute. But we got off. The liner swerved 
to port and went by us lighted up like a sea Alhambra, 
all her deckse crowded with People and her Band Playing 
‘The Merry Widow,^ and Clanarthur lost his chance of 
being a Merry Widower. But she passed so jolly close 
to us that a lot of Wash slopped in, and Nini screamed 
and called out, “You silly boy, it^s all your Fault!” which 
I like, considering the sittuation. And She Pulled her 
White Evening Wrap round her and said, “Let's get back 
to the yacht; it's shockingly cold and the sea is getting 
abominably Rough!” And then I had to own up what a 
jolly Hat we were in, and that we had been steddily 
Drifting Out to Sea for Some time Past. 

What price me? I felt small enough to get into a 
cricket-ball case already, but I felt something worse when 
Mrs. Clanarthur Boxed my Ears. She said I was a Little 


240 THE FLY AND THE SPIDER 


Idiot, and that she had been culpably Reckless to alow 
Me to Take Her on the Water, and what would Freddy 
say? Freddy is Captain Clanarthur. So I said I would 
stand up to Him with or without Gloves, Fight Him with 
Rivolverse across a necktie if he liked, and that He could 
Divorse Her afterwardse and then she could marry me, 
and everything would be jolly well settled all Round, as 
she Had Told me He was aborrent to Her only the night 
before when she kissed me under the Aft Awning three 
Times — which she Had Done, though she called me an 
untruthful little Retch for saying so, and then she had 
Histericks, and then what Uncle Podmore calls the Mal- 
lady of the Wave came on, and I had to ship the oars 
and Hold Her Up, and she was Awfully Bad. Mother on 
the Turbean xing to Boulogne was Nothing To it. I am 
not Joking When I Tell You that We Drifted About in 
That beestly Dinghy all night at the immanent Risk of 
Being Run Down by anything from a Tramp Steamer to 
a Government Crooser, and if the Tide Had Not Turned, 
which it did at 4 o’clock in the Morning, we should be 
as dead now as Two People can be. 

0 crumbs, when I looked at Nini, who After jawing at 
me till she was Tired Had Gone to sleep with Her Head 
on my Shoulder! By the Glimmaring Light of Dawn she 
Looked as Old as Aunt Honoria, and not Half as Nice. 
Her Swagger Evening Gown and Mantal were Ruined 
with Seawater, and one Long Tale of her Lovely Hair 
was Washing about in the Bilje at the Bottom of the 
Dinghy, we had shipped such a lot in the Night. Her 
Forhead and one Eye were nearly Hidden by a Top Piece 
with curls that had come off, though there was lots of 
Hair underneath it, and she was Perfectly Blue with Cold 
and Fright. 

1 thought she must have been Pretty Old when she 


THE FLY AND THE SPIDER 241 


Married Captain Clanarthur after all, and when I Re- 
membered how mad I had been about Her, and how I 
wanted to Snipe Clanarthur and Marry Her, I felt aw- 
fully sick at having been such an unlimated ass. 

She woke up and called me some more Names and then 
a Pilot cutter came along bound for Portsmouth Pier, and 
I Haled the Pilot and He agreed to take us back to Cowes 
Road for £1. And they Hawled us on Board because we 
were too jolly stiff to clime up the cutter’s side and we 
Got back to the Yacht in Time for Breakfast. 

You may guess if the men of the Party chaffed me Be- 
fore how frightfully they chaff Now, I am Roasted about 
the Beastly Business from morning till Night. Uncle 
Podmore told me they had sent out 2 Boats to Find us 
and burned blue Lights. All Captain Clanarthur Said 
when He saw Mrs. Clanarthur come up the yacht’s side 
like a Ragbag, was, “So there You are, are you?” But 
suppose he is Lying Low to bring an Axion for Divorse, 
do you suppose I shall have to marry Mrs. Clanarthur? 

I do jolly well Hope Not. She is old enough to be my 
mother, and Has a Perfectly awful temper. 

Fancy me being as Pleased as a Fox-terrier with 2 tails 
when she let me Kiss Her under the Deck Awning after 
dinner. Fellows with lots of good sense can be asses at 
times. 

Of course I tell you All this in Confidence on the Strict 
Q.T., because you are Not like other Girls about Keeping 
a Secret. There is a Big Review of the Home Fleet and 
the Swedish Squadron by the King to-day, and the Fleet 
will be elluminated in the Evening after dinner, and there 
will be Fireworks from the Victoria Pier. But whether it 
is my having been Out all Night with Nini — I mean Mrs. 
Clanarthur — in that rotten Dinghy or something else I 
don’t ixactly know, but I feel jolly miserable. 


^42 THE FLY AND THE SPIDER 


I wish Greening minor was here, it would do me Good 
to give the little Brute a regular licking. Fancy him 
Being in love with a Barmade and writing her verses. 
And Regger, who has the nerve to make up to his sister’s 
Jerman Governess. I can’t think why Fellows do such 
idiotic Things. 

I Think rather than Have to marry Mrs. Clanarthur I 
would Run away and be a stoker like that Fellow in the 
newspapers. She looks quite young again this afternoon 
and her Hair is beautifully done, but I keep on seeing 
Her as she was at 4 this morning, when that pilot-cutter 
Found us. 

I am getting rather sorry for Clanarthur tied up to a 
Woman who Boxes a Fellow’s ears and calls him Names 
for Nothing — that is, I should feel sorry for him if I was 
quite Eesy in my mind about his bringing an Axion for 
Divorse. 

Ever your affeckshionate Brother, 

Tynstone. 


FOR VALOR! 


T he City of Smutborough was holding a solemn pub- 
lic function in honor of one of her sons. Formerly 
a soldier in the Smutborough Regiment, he had won his 
V.C. a long time back in the early days of the last South 
African War. At the conclusion of hostilities, having, like 
many other men, attained perfect competency and ripe 
experience with the expiration of the age-limit, Color- 
Sergeant Stoneham was naturally shelved as being of no 
further use to the nation, except in an emergency like the 
last. 

The rear of the Town Hall, Smutborough, formed one 
side of an unsavory blind alley: a dingy cul-de-sac 
blocked at the end by the high, sooty, spike-bordered wall 
of what was termed, with mordant but unconscious 
humor, the Workhouse Recreation Yard. The Work- 
house loomed large upon the opposite side. Though the 
great main entrance for misery was in another street, a 
solid oaken door, hospitably garnished with large nails 
and a double row of bristling prongs, exhibited upon a 
mud-splashed fanlight above it the black-lettered legend, 
^‘Casual Ward.'' 

It was only one o’clock, and the door would not open 
before seven, but a queue of deplorable applicants had 
already mustered before it. A tall, upright, gaunt man 
of about forty, dressed in a weather-stained jacket-suit of 
tweed, and wearing a shabby deerstalker low over his 
haggard eyes, had been one of the last to attach himself 
to Poverty’s kite-tail. 

Against the wall of the Workhouse Recreation Yard 
was the excuse for a considerable expenditure of public 

MS 


244 


FOR VALOR! 


funds at a moment felt by the humbler citizens of Smut- 
borough to be extremely inopportune. The excuse was 
let into the sooty brick masonry. It made a queerly- 
shaped bulge in the middle of an oppressively new Union 
Jack which covered it, and upon each side of this tan- 
talizing mystery stood a large, pink, shining police-con- 
stable, in the largest size obtainable of brand-new white 
woolen gloves. 

At the bottom of the blind alley were more constables, 
ready in case of the mob of unemployed making a rush 
round from the front of the Town Hall. But at present 
it surged, a human sea lashed to fury by the whip of 
hunger and the voice of Socialism, in the square outside 
the long row of first-floor windows where the sumptuous 
luncheon was laid for a hundred guests. 

“AVahl T’ss’s! Ya’-’aah!” 

^‘Close up here, close up!” A police-sergeant, hurry- 
ing from the bottom of the alley, herded the struggling 
queue before the door of the casual ward into a compact 
bunch. Then the rearward portals of the Town Hall, 
before which a red-and-white striped awning had sud- 
denly sprouted, were thrown wide. A crush of rosetted 
stewards, carrying very shiny hats, preceded the Mace- 
Bearer; the Mayor, a plump and rosy personage, in his 
furred robes and chain of office, appeared, walking be- 
tween a lovely lady in sumptuous sables and an accu- 
rately-attired gentleman, whose intense vacuity of eye, 
mechanical bow and smile, and inability to utter any- 
thing without being first prompted by an attendant secre- 
tary from behind, denoted him a Personage of the first 
importance. . . . The Sheriff followed with the Mayor- 
ess, the Aldermen and the guests trooped after. And the 
mob at the other side of the Town Hall, making a charge 
round the corner, and being repulsed by the police, vented 


FOR VALOR! 


245 


its indignation in such an outburst of boo^s that the 
Mayor’s speech was delivered in dumb show. Every- 
body clapped when he had done, though. Upon which 
the Personage, prompted by his attendant spirit, deliv- 
ered himself in short. House of Commons gasps of the 
contents of a Be-ribboned roll of typoscript. The last 
sentence was audible: ^^And let this! Be a perpetual! 
Reminder to this! And succeeding generations! How 
our! Mother country! Rewards her! Heroic sons!” 
Everybody clapped and applauded the Personage. The 
Personage, then, advancing upon exquisitely-polished 
boots to the Union Jack with the mysterious bulge under 
it pulled a white cord with a lavender kid glove, and 
brought the flag down, revealing a square block of Caen 
stone bearing some sculptural figures in low relief set in 
the masonry above a neat little drinking-fountain. Then 
the Personage, the lovely lady in furs, the Mayor and 
Mayoress, Sheriff, Aldermen, guests, and stewards 
trooped back into the Town Hall to luncheon, and the 
crowd surged back again to boo the banqueters. But 
after the last of these had, under a cross-fire of gibes and 
taunts, taken himself away, the turbulent ocean of hu- 
manity rolled back into its foodless garrets and cellars, 
and the Socialist leaders who had urged on the ring- 
leaders retired to dine at a hotel. Subsequently the alley 
behind the Town Hall became gorged with homeless per- 
sons seeking shelter for the night, and when seven o’clock 
struck and the Casual Ward door opened, one rush of 
misery packed it instantly from wall to wall, and Stone- 
ham, V. C., late Color-Sergeant in the Smutborough Regi- 
ment, found himself shut out. 

He wondered, as he ruefully felt in his empty pockets, 
whether it would end in his having to sell the Cross? He 
had never failed to raise money on his reserve-pension 


246 


FOR VALOR! 


when the General Brushmaker’s Union had forced him to 
come out with the other men, because a non-union 
employe had been taken on at the factory. Since then 
he had navvied, stoked, scavenged, done everything and 
anything that a capable man might do to get bare bread 
and common shelter for himself and his. Now the wife 
was in Clogham Infirmary with two of the children, and 
another was dead of clemming, and . . . and the old 
wound from the cross-nicked Mauser bullet pained him 
horribly. He was giddy and sick with starvation, and 
the world was spinning round. . . . 

Just in time he caught at the edge of the new drinking 
fountain, and saved himself from falling. The grudging 
glimmer from the fanlight over the door of the Casual 
Ward showed him something that roused him as a swoon- 
ing man may be roused by a splash of icy water in his 
face. It was his own name in shining gold letters, boldly 
incised upon a handsome tablet under the sculptured 
block that jutted from the sooty brick wall. 

“Lord above, what’s this?” gasped the man whom 
Smutborough had that day toasted. He struck a match, 
the last he had, and read, beneath the bas-relief which 
represented the city’s hero in the act of shielding a 
wounded officer with his body from a supposititious vol- 
ley of Boer bullets: 

TO COMMEMORATE THE GALLANT ACTION 
BY WHICH COLOUR-SERGEANT H. STONEHAM, 

OF THE SMUTBOROUGH REGIMENT, 

AND A NATIVE OF THIS CITY, 

WON THE VICTORIA CROSS. 

In Action, Paardfontein, Transvaal, South Africa, 1901 . 

“Move on, you!” said the voice of a police-constable 
behind him. And Stoneham, V.C., drove his freezing 


FOR VALOR! 


247 


hands deep into his ragged pockets, wheeled and obeyed. 

“It’s a rum world!” He reeled a little in his gait, and 
whispered thickly to himself, as if some of the champagne 
and grub that had been consumed that day in his honor 
had got into his head by proxy. “Damned queer from 
start to finish ! But, in the long run, I’m a bit better off 
than the bloke in the Bible. He asked for bread, and 
they gave him a stone. And I’ve got a drinking fountain 
into the bargain!” 

And the wet night swallowed him up. 


MELLICENT 


H appy is the corpse, they say, that the rain rains 
on,’’ observed Mr. Popham, “but knowing his 
rheumatic nature, I could have wished him a drier day. 
However, we must take what comes, and it’s curious that 
what comes is generally what one would have preferred 
to be without. Life is very like a switchback railway,” 
continued Mr. Popham. “Now you’re up, a-looking down 
upon other human beings; and now you’re down a-look- 
ing up at ’em. And similarly your fellow-creatures as 
regards you. It’s a curious reflection that I shan’t ever 
measure out his colchicum again; or soothe the morning 
twinges in his knees and elbers with a lithia lollipop in a 
glass of warm water; or hear him swear when I tight- 
en his straps and buckles; or fetch and carry his wigs 
between this and the hairdresser’s in Regent Place. Who 
do those wigs belong to now? Yesterday his coffin, an 
extra-sized, double oak casket, metal-lined, with plated 
handles and silver name-plate, stood in there!” He 
jerked his head at the double doors leading into the bed- 
room. “This morning we accompanied him to Woking 
Cemetery. This afternoon they are a-reading of the 
Will in Portland Place, and Odlett gave me his solemn 
word that John Henry shouldn’t remove his ear from 
the library keyhole without finding out whether a little 
bit on account of faithful services rendered hadn’t been 
left to Frederick T. Popham, valet to the above. For 
he promised to leave me something all along, and almost 
248 


MELLICENT 


249 


with his last breath, haven’t forgotten you, Popham,’ 
says he. ‘You’ve been remembered, you’ll find, in the 
Will.’ And . . . Lord! Was that you? What a turn 
you gave me. Miss Mellicent!” 

“Why, you’re quite nervous, Mr. Popham, sir,” said 
Miss Mellicent. 

Miss Mellicent had bumped at the door with the end 
of a coal-scuttle, and now apologized, bringing it in. Miss 
Mellicent was a thin person of some thirty London sum- 
mers, dressed in a worn black gown with stray threads 
sticking out where crape had been ripped off. Her hair 
would have been a nice brown if it had been less dusty, 
her gray eyes were timid and kind, and her dingy pale 
face had a look of belated girlhood — was sometimes quite 
transfigured into prettiness when she smiled. 

“I’ll own I am a little unlike myself,” agreed Mr. Pop- 
ham. “Perhaps it’s his luggage all ready in a pile near 
the door, as if we were off to a foreign Spa within the 
next five minutes, or going down to Helsham to stop in 
his usual rooms in the south wing. Perhaps it’s his going 
off so sudden in quite a mild attack. Perhaps it’s the 
strain of the funeral this morning, perhaps it’s sympathy 
for Sir George and the family, perhaps it’s a little anxiety 
on my own account! I know what he had, and I’ve my 
notions as to how he’s disposed of it! The likeliest way 
to bring about a lawsuit and get it into Chancery would 
be his way, bless you ! The embroilingest way ; the way 
to bring about the greatest amount of jealousy and bitter- 
ness ; the way to cost the most to all concerned and bring 
about the smallest return in the way of satisfaction and 
profit to ’em, would be the way he’d give the preference 
to over all. And if he was a-listening to me at this 
minute,” said Mr. Popham, with a slight uncomfortable 
glance toward the folding doors that led into the bed- 


250 


MELLICENT 


room — “and I’m sure I hope he’s better employed! — he’d 
own I’ve done him no more than justice!” 

“The many years I’ve known General Bastling,’'’ said 
Miss Mellicent, “and it’s going on for twenty that he’s 
lodged with us four months in each twelvemonth — I’ve 
never asked or cared to know. Was he a rich gentle- 
man?” 

“Why, I should call him pretty snug at that,” said 
Mr. Popham. “Ten thousand in Home Rails; a pretty 
little nest-egg of five thousand in Government Three per 
Cents; a matter of sixteen hundred invested in the Chil- 
lianmugger Anthracite Mining Company ; and a nice little 
bit of loose cash in the current account at Cox’s. That’s 
what I’ve my eye on, to tell you the truth; and I don’t 
think it’s unnatural or greedy.” 

“I would never believe you selfish or money-seeking,” 
said Miss Mellicent, folding her hard-worked red hands 
upon her worn stuff apron, “not if an Angel was to come 
down out of the stained-glass window in church — I sit 
under it on a Sunday evening sometimes, when I’m not 
wanted at home — and tell me so!” 

“I hope I’m not naturally more of a groveler than 
other men in my situation — my late situation — would be,” 
returned Mr. Popham. “But forty odd is getting on in 
years, and I’m reluctant at my time of life to go looking 
for another middle-aged gentleman to valet. The young 
ones are too harum-scarum and given to late hours for a 
man like me; and if they weren’t, they’d be unnatural 
phenomenons. A nice little inn in a country town, with a 
decentish bar custom and a solid bottle-and-jug depart- 
ment, and a cold lunch in the coffee-room on market- 
days, would suit me; with Hunt, Harriers, Freemasons, 
and Friendly Societies’ dinners to cater for; and a private 
understanding with a few gamekeepers anxious to pro- 


MELLICENT 


251 


mote their own interests in a quiet, unassuming way — ^the 
guards of the late and early Expresses — and one or two 
West End poulterers and greengrocers as I have met in 
what I might call the butterfly stage of my existence, 
when I wore silk stockings and livery, floured my hair 
regular, wore a bookay on Levee and Drawing-Room 
days, and would as soon have eaten cold joint or cleaned 
the carriage as taken up coals. And why I haven’t re- 
lieved you of the scuttle before this, is a question be- 
tween me and my conscience. Let me take it and put it 
down. It won’t be the first time, if it is the last, will it?” 

“Don’t, Mr. Popham, sir!” pleaded Miss Mellicent; 
“don’t speak in that downhearted way.” Her red hands 
plucked at a corner of her dingy stuff apron, her gray 
eyes were already pink about the rims. Tears rose in 
them. She coughed and swallowed nervously. 

“The Bastling Arms is the name of that there little 
inn,” said Mr. Popham. “The sign is the same as the 
crest on his notepaper and his seal-ring and the lock of 
that despatch-box.” He pointed to the despatch-box 
crowning the pile of solid, well-used, much be-labeled 
portmanteaux and imperials that occupied the corner 
near the door of the room — a comfortably furnished, 
rather dingy second-floor apartment in a quiet street 
above, and running parallel with, Oxford Circus. “The 
landlord died the day before yesterday — as if to oblige 
or aggravate me, I don’t know which! — and the widow, 
knowing my ambitions, dropped me a postcard to inform. 
Three hundred is wanted for the lease, stock, and good- 
will, and fifty for the furniture, stable and yard-effects. 
A bargain. Miss Mellicent, if I only had the money! 
But as it goes, I’m a hundred and fifty short — unless 
John Henry’s ear is tingling at this moment with tidings 
of comfort and joy. Now, what do you mean by lighting 


252 


MELLICENT 


a fire as if I wanted coddling, when youVe a dozen people 
to look after, if you’ve one?” 

Miss Mellicent was down on her knees at the old- 
fashioned grate, laying a fire. She struck a match and 
lighted the kindling, and, though it was mid- June, the 
bright blaze was welcome in the dingy sitting-room, 
whose window-panes streamed with torrents of rain. 

“The gentlemen are all out but the third-floor front,” 
she said, “and when the rain began, and I thought of you 
sitting up here in the dim light alone, it seemed as if I 
might do this much to make things cheer fuller. For 
you’ve done so much for me ever since I came here” — her 
red and blackened knuckles went up to her pink-rimmed 
eyes — “you always done so much for me!” 

“For you, my dear soul!” ejaculated Mr. Popham, 
with circular eyes. “You make too much of things, Miss 
Mellicent!” 

“That’s one of ’em,” cried grateful Mellicent, turning 
upon him a thin, blushing face down which two tears 
openly trickled. “You’ve called me ‘Miss Mellicent’ 
from the first. From the time I came here to Mr. and 
Mrs. Davis, an orphan, ten years old, in my cheap black 
frock, made out of the skirt of poor mother’s mourning 
for poor father, you’ve always called me ‘Miss.’ It 
helped me, somehow; just as your carrying up the heavy 
cans of hot water and the coals did.” 

“You was a bright-eyed, grateful little mouse, too,” 
said Mr. Popham retrospectively, “and many’s the time 
I’ve had it in my mind to speak to Mr. and Mrs. Davis 
about their driving a little thing like you so hard. 
They’re past driving now, that’s one comfort! It’s years 
since I’ve set eyes on either of ’em, now I come to think 
of it!” 


MELLICENT 


^53 


“It^s years!” Mellicent echoed in a slightly bewildered 
way. ^‘Why of course it would be years!” 

“She was a mountain, was the venerable lady, and the 
old gentleman was a mere lath,” said Mr. Popham' medi- 
tatively. “He used to answer the letters we wrote year 
by year, season in and season out, from the family seat 
at Helsham, from the Engadine, Aix, or Ems, Paris, or 
the Riviera, to say we were coming on such a day. Ten 
years ago the writing of the letters changed to a femi- 
nine hand — and since then I haven’t seen him.” 

“Why — don’t you know — he died?” said Mellicent. 

“Did he really?” cried Mr. Popham. “Well, it was 
like him to keep it so quiet, and like the old lady, too. 
Reminds me — I haven’t set eyes on her for a matter of 
five year and over!” 

“Oh dear, Mr. Popham! she’s dead too!” gasped Melli- 
cent in distress. 

“She’d be pleased to know how little we’ve missed 
her, I know,” responded Mr. Popham cheerfully. “Now, 
quite between ourselves. Miss Mellicent, since for the 
first time since I’ve known you we’re indulging in a con- 
fidential conversation — who’s carrying on the house?” 

“Don’t you know? No — ^you’ve never asked or 
thought to ask in all these years,” returned Mellicent. 
“The person who carries on the house is — not quite — 
but I suppose she would be called so — a lady!” 

“And very sensibly she manages,” approved Mr. Pop- 
ham, “in keeping out of the way and letting you do it 
for her. And a nice income she makes. I’ll be bound! 
Why, the house has never been empty since first I come 
here. Old gentlemen with ample means on every floor, 
toddling out to their clubs when their various complaints 
permit, and dining at home — and dining comfortably, 
too — when they don’t. Such a polish on the boots, such 


254 ? 


MELLICENT 


a crispness of the breakfast bacon, such a flavor about 
the coffee and the curries, such a tenderness about the 
joints, such a dryness about the daily newspaper, and 
such an absence of over-statement about the total of the 
weekly bill as, with all my experience, IVe never found 
elsewhere. And all owing to You! If your modesty al- 
lowed you to think over yourself for one moment — which 
I truly believe you’ve never done since you were born — 
you’d admit. Miss Mellicent — that you’re a wonder!” 

^‘Oh! do you truly mean it?” she cried, with her heart 
upon her lips. 

“I do,” answered Mr. Popham, with warmth. ‘^And 
if the present proprietor of the lodgings wasn’t a lady — 
and knew what was good for him — he’d ” 

^‘Oh no! No, Mr. Popham, sir, no! He wouldn’t. 
No one could ever think of me in such a way!” Her 
red and blackened hands went up to the piteous, quiver- 
ing face, and her lean bosom heaved behind the meager 
bib of her scorched stuff apron. ^‘Never!” 

“Tell me now, upon your honor,” Mr. Popham pressed. 
“Haven’t you never looked at nobody in that way your- 
self?” 

Miss Mellicent fairly writhed and shuddered with 
nervousness. But she laughed, looking away from Mr. 
Popham and into the old-fashioned but handsome glass 
over the mantelshelf, in which, within an Early Vic- 
torian frame of fly-spotted gilding, the reflection of Mr. 
Popham’s alert, well-featured, respectable profile and 
her own poor, wistful face appeared together. 

“If you won’t ask me no more — yes, then! but he 
never dreamed o’ me!” 

“More shame for him!” asseverated Mr. Popham 
stoutly. “Why, what a put-upon young woman you are. 
Miss Mellicent! Since you were ten years old, I do 


MELLICENT 


^55 


verily believe youVe never had a pleasure, never had a 
present, never had a friend, never had an outing — no 
more than you’ve had a sweetheart.” 

^‘Ah, but,” she cried, with a happy laugh, “I have had 
a friend! You’ve been my friend, haven’t you? And I 
have had pleasure in knowing that. And I’ve had an 
outing — ^twice. Once Uncle Davis took me to the 
World’s Fair — it was my twelfth birthday — and once, 
two years later, you treated me to the pantomime.” 

^^Did I? And uncommon generous and considerate it 
was of me, I must say, to have done that much for you, 
you poor little neglected, lonely creature!” uttered the 
remorseful Mr. Popham. 

never forgot it,” Mellicent cried, with beaming eyes. 
^^The glory and the splendor, the living roses and the 
talking animals and the shining fairies, and you to ex- 
plain it all and be so kind. I never forgot it! Who 
could?” 

“Why, I’m beginning to remember something about it 
myself!” said Mr. Popham, clearing. “We partook of a 
dozen oysters and some shandy-gaff at a fish-bar on the 
way home. According to present views, we ought to 
have shaken carbolic powder over that shellfish instead 
of pepper, and washed it down with Condy’s Fluid; but, 
being behind the present times, we enjoyed ourselves.” 

“Didn’t we!” Mellicent clapped her hands. “I have 
gone back to that beautiful evening in memory hundreds 
and hundreds of times! It has helped me through such 
a lot of hard things — for things are hard sometimes. 
Sometimes, when you aren’t here, and there isn’t no one 
to speak to on the stairs, and the gentlemen are over- 
particular about their boots and changeable about the 
hours for their meals, things get the better of me to that 
extent that I scream and run!” 


g56 


MELLICENT 


“Scream and run, do you?’’ said the puzzled Mr. Pop- 
ham. “And how do you do it? Or do you do it without 
knowing how, eh?” 

“I shriek out loud and hear myself as though my voice 
came from a long way olf,” said Mellicent, opening her 
large eyes, “and then my feet begin to run. I scream, 
and I run screaming up to the little top attic I slept in 
when I came here as a child, where my old rag doll is 
still, and mother’s patchwork counterpane covers the 
truckle-bed. And I hide my head in that, and cry 
myself quiet and patient again!” 

“And Lord have mercy on your lonely little soul!” 
cried Mr. Popham. “Patient you are, and that’s the 
truth!” He took the knotty red hand and held it in 
both of his for an instant, looking at the downcast face. 
“But don’t scream and run any more. It isn’t good for 
you!” 

“I haven’t screamed and runned for quite a long time 
now,” she answered. “But” — her poor lips trembled — 
“I think I shall when you are gone for good.” 

“Nonsense, nonsense!” Mr. Popham squeezed the red 
hand and dropped it gently. “I’ll come and see you 
from time to time.” 

“And leave your little country inn?” said Mellicent, 
trying to smile. “You won’t be able!” 

“I could leave the landlady in charge,” suggested Mr. 
Popham. “Stop, though, a landlady is the kind of 
article that doesn’t go with the furniture and fixtures. I 
shall have to look out for her myself.” His face changed. 
“Upon my word I shall!” 

“I know the kind you’ll choose,” sighed Miss Melli- 
cent. “And the best won’t be good enough for you, Mr. 
Popham. She must be young and fair and plump and 
rosy and blue-eyed, with golden curls like the Fairy 


MELLICENT 


257 


Queen in that pantomime, or the lovely dolls I see in the 
shop windows when I’m out buying meat and groceries 
for the gentlemen. And her hands must be as white and 
soft as mine are red and hard. And 

^^Don’t cry, my dear!” begged Mr. Popham. He 
stooped over her as she hid her flaming cheeks in the 
hard-worked hands. ^‘You have pretty hair. Miss Melli- 
cent,” he said, with a sensation of surprise at the dis- 
covery. 

“I’ve been turning out rooms,” she sobbed, “and it’s 
full of dust!” 

“And you’d have a pretty flgure,” said Mr. Popham, 
now embarked upon a career of discovery, “if you took 
the trouble to pull ’em in. And you’re young — barely 
thirty — and I’m ten years older. And you’re a first-class 
double extra A.l. housekeeper, cook, and manager. See 
here! Give the lady proprietor a month’s notice, and 
come and be landlady of the Bastling Arms at Hel- 
sham!” 

“You — ^you’re not in earnest?” 

She faced him, quivering, transfigured, panting. 

“Ain’t I?” remarked Mr. Popham simply. “Say ^Yes,’ 
Miss Mellicent; give me a kiss, and we shall both begin 
to believe it. Run and change your dress, and we’ll call 
a cab and make another evening of it, and if the Alham- 
bra ballet won’t do as well as the pantomime, under the 
present circumstances, I shall be surprised! There’s 
John Henry’s knock at the hall door. He brings good 
news, or it wouldn’t be such a loud one. It takes the 
girl ten minutes to get up the kitchen stairs ; she’s a born 
crawler, if ever there was one, and I’ve a fancy I should 
like you to let the boy in — if you’ve no objection?” 

“Oh, no, no!” she cried gladly, and flashed out of the 
room. 


258 


MELLICENT 


“She’s wonderfully nimble on her feet,” mused Mr. 
Popham; “and though I’ve never seen ’em to my knowl- 
edge, I shouldn’t mind putting a bit on the chance of 
their being pretty ones. Lord! I seem in for discoveries 
to-day. Come in, John Henry!” 

But it was not John Henry, but the butler from Port- 
land Place. 

“Odlett! Well, this is kind; and you with such an 
objection to getting your feet damp!” Mr. Popham 
shook the large dough-colored hand of Mr. Odlett until 
the butler secured the member from further assault by 
putting it into his pocket. 

“The boy was wanted to go upon an errand,” ex- 
plained Mr. Odlett, in the voice of the description known 
as rich. “And as a friend!” — his smile creased his large 
pale cheeks, and caused the temporary disappearance of 
his small twinkling eyes — “as a friend, no more port 
being wanted for the party in the library, I thought I’d 
come and put you out of your misery!” 

“That was uncommon kind of you, Odlett!” breathed 
the acutely-anxious Mr. Popham. He wiped his brow, 
and fixed an intense gaze on the particular feature from 
which intelligence might be expected. 

“The boy did his duty faithful from first to last,” said 
Mr. Odlett, selecting a chair and carefully separating his 
coat-tails as a preliminary to sitting down; “and when 
he laughed, ’ad the presence of mind to drop his ’ead to 
the level of the library door-mat, consequently it was 
supposed to be the pug a-sneezing!” 

“Well,” gasped Mr. Popham. “Well?” 

“The Will come up to our fondest expectations,” con- 
tinued Mr. Odlett. “Sir George, who never shoots, ’ave 
the General’s old saloon-pistols and sporting Mantons, 
and BelVs Life and the Army Gazette for twenty year 


MELLICENT 


^59 


back. Mr. Roderick is left the Chinese and Indian 
curiosities on condition of his dusting ^em hisself regu- 
larly. My Lady 'ave ten pounds to purchase a mourn- 
ing-ring, provided she’ll undertake to wear it; the young 
ladies ditto; and the money ” 

“The money ” choked Mr. Popham. 

“The money, with the exception of several smaller 
legacies, goes, with the consent of the Mayor and Cor- 
poration of Helsham, to purchase and lay out a Public 
Park for the people in memory of the Testator. There’s 
to be a mausoleum in the middle of it, in which his 
crematory urn is to be kep’, and a bandstand at each 
end, because he always loved to see people cheerful 
about him. Also, he bequeaths to Miss Mellicent Davis, 
at his lodgings in Margaret Place, five guineas and a set 
of ivory chessmen; and to his old and valued friend, 
William Odlett, which is me, the sum of two hundred 
pounds. He adds, he hopes I’ll drink myself to death 
on it, inside of a month; but he always was a playful old 
gentleman. No — you’re not forgotten!” 

Mr. Popham wiped his brow with an air of relief. 

“You’re not forgotten — which ought to be a consola- 
tion to you!” repeated Mr. Odlett, creasing all over with 
a vast, comprehensive smile. “You’re to ’ave his walk- 
ing sticks, clothes, wigs, the rugs and plaids, and the 
spare set of teeth, hoping you’ll always have something 
to employ ’em on. I came over a-purpose to tell you; 
you’re so fond of a joke, Popham.” 

“I don’t deny it,” said the crushed and disappointed 
Mr. Popham; “but where the humor of this one is, hang 
me if I know!” 

“You’ll see by-and-by,” said Mr. Odlett consolingly. 
“When you’ve ’ad time to think it over. Meanwhile I’ll 
stand a couple of whiskies hot. A man don’t come into 


260 


MELLICENT 


two hundred, cool, every day, and this windfall is par- 
ticularly welcome. You know Madgell, the landlord of 
the Bastling Arms at Helsham, is gone over to the 
majority?” 

Mr. Popham nodded a pale face. 

‘‘The lease, stock, goodwill, and fixtures of that pleas- 
ant little ’ouse is to be ’ad for what I call a song. And 
I’m going — in a week or so, when I’ve laid my hand 
secure on this here little legacy — to pop in and settle 
down. Plummer, the cook, a plump and capable young 
woman, ’ave expressed her willingness to be the land- 
lady. I did suppose she had had a bit of an understand- 
ing with you. But she’s quite come round my way since 
the reading of the will, and I thought you’d like to 
know it!” 

“You’re uncommon considerate,” said the rasped and 
tingling Mr. Popham, “but I’ve made arrangements else- 
where.” 

“Perhaps the Other One will change her mind when 
she finds out you’re diddled in your expectations!” said 
the comforting Mr. Odlett, shaking hands heartily. 
“Good-night. I shan’t hear of you coming to the door!” 

But Mr. Popham did come, and slammed it behind the 
departing form of Mr. Odlett with great heartiness. 

“Damn his wigs and walking sticks!” he said in the 
murky passage, “and his spare teeth as well! A nice 
Job’s comforter, Odlett! ‘Perhaps she’ll change her 
mind when she knows you’ve been diddled in your ex- 
pectations.’ Beg pardon. Miss Mellicent, I didn’t see 
you were there! You’re not hurt, are you?” 

“Only by your thinking I could change!” said Miss 
Mellicent, with a sob. 

The ground-floor sitting-room door stood ajar; the 
room was unoccupied. Mr. Popham led Miss Mellicent 


MELLICENT 


261 


in, turned up one of the blackened incandescent gas-jets, 
and stood petrified at the sight its hissing white glare 
revealed. 

gray silk gown, trimmed with real lace, and a gold 
chain cried the bewildered Mr. Popham. diamond 
brooch, as I’m a living sinner! and an opera-mantle and 
kid gloves and a fan! And your pretty brown hair done 
up quite tastefully, and your eyes a-shining over the 
roses in your cheeks! What’s done it? Who’s responsi- 
ble for it? How did it come about?” 

If she had been less shy of him, she would have an- 
swered in two words, “Through love!” But she only 
faltered: 

“I’m so glad you think I look a bit nice in them. 
They — they belonged to poor Aunt Davis, and I’ve had 
’em altered to fit. She — she left them to me when she 
died!” 

“And handed over the lodging-house and furniture to 
the present lady proprietor,” observed Mr. Popham, 
searching in his trouser pocket for a cab whistle, “whom 
I don’t happen to know by sight.” 

“Oh, yes, you do!” Miss Mellicent’s blush and smile 
made quite a pretty little face of hers, and Mr. Popham 
boldly kissed it on the spot. “Oh yes, you do, for she’s 
me! I should say, I am her! Law bless you, dear Mr. 
Popham, I didn’t mean to startle you like that! Who 
cares about your being left a lot of old clothes and wigs 
instead of a sum of money — though you deserved it, true 
and faithful as you was to him that’s gone! Haven’t I 
plenty for both? And landlord of the Bastling Arms 
you shall be to-morrow, if you’ve set your heart on it! 
and we shall be late for the beautiful sights at the 
theater if you don’t whistle for a taxicab.” 

“Life is certainly a switchback!” said Mr. Popham, as 


^62 


MELLICENT 


he breathed and trilled alternately on the damp door- 
step. ^‘Now youVe down a-lookin’ up at your fellow- 
mortals, and now you’re up, a-lookin’ down upon ’em! 
. . . We’ll have a bit of supper at that very fish-bar, if 
it’s still in existence, on our way home, carefully drawing 
the line at oysters as risky and uncertain articles of diet 
for two middle-aged people about to enter upon the 
duties and privileges of married life!” 


THE COLLAPSE OF THE IDEAL 


C ANWARDEN did not write sonnets, or he would 
have composed many, not only in celebration of 
Petronella’s eyebrows, but of her crystalline blue eyes 
and burnished hair, her willowy figure of the latest and 
most wonderful shape, and her slim, white hands and 
arched insteps. But in all his plays — for he was a bud- 
ding dramatist of exceeding promise — he described her 
in red-lined type: — Enter So-and-So, a fair and grace- 
ful girl of not more than twenty-five summers, with 
sapphire eyes and golden locks, attired in the costume 
of the period” (whatever the period might be). ^‘She 
exhales the joyous freshness of a^May morning, and 
her gurgling laugh rivals the spring song of the thrush” 
This pleased the leading ladies hugely, even when their 
eyes were not of sapphire; but stage managers found 
Urban Canwarden’s stage directions a trial. If he had 
been firmly seated in the motor-car of public approval, 
both hands on the driving-wheel as he ripped along the 
track of success, they would have smiled even while 
they writhed. But Canwarden was not yet famous, and 
the stage-managers were free not to disguise their feel- 
ings. However, he went on; getting thin — thin for a 
plump man — in the effort to make enough to marry on. 
For the beloved of his soul was not of the bread-and- 
cheese-and-kisses type of betrothed of whom we read 
in novels that have many years ago silted to the bottom- 
shelves in public libraries, and are occasionally issued 
as new in paper covers at fourpence-halfpenny. Her 
full name was Petronella Lesser, and she dwelt with her 

263 


264 THE COLLAPSE OF THE IDEAL 


parents in an Early Victorian villa on Haverstock Hill^ 
a residence which had been slowly settling down on one 
side ever since the Tube borings had started. The lease 
would be out, old Mr. Lesser calculated, a day or two 
before the Corinthian-pillared stucco and brick porch 
sat down. He was something in the Italian warehouse 
supply-line in the City, and a singular judge of olives, 
Gruyere, and barreled Norwegian sprats. Petronella 
never looked a fairer, more poetic thing than when con- 
cealing vast quantities of these zests behind the latest 
thing in blouses, day or evening wear, and Urban Can- 
warden, as he gazed upon his betrothed, or very nearly 
so, swore to himself that she should never know what it 
is to go lacking the hors d’ceuvres that lend piquancy to 
the Banquet of Life. 

Petronella was a girl whose white and well-developed 
bosom was the home of emotions but little livelier than 
those that animate the beautiful person of a Regent- 
street wax-doll. Sawdust will burn, it is true, but the 
costlier puppets are stuffed with choicer stuffing. She 
had not fallen in love with Urban Canwarden; she had 
simply frozen on to him. She had liked sitting in the 
author’s box on First Nights, while the author tore his 
hair at his Club or in his chambers. She liked his per- 
son, his friends, his prospects. She looked forward to 
an elegantly-furnished villa on Campden Hill, with a 
cottage at Sonning or Hampton Wick, and mid-winter 
runs to the South of France, when a distinguished 
dramatist, the husband of a charming and attractive 
wife, whose salon would be the constant resort of the 
fine flower, the top of the basket of London Society, 
should require rest and change of air after his exhaust- 
ing labors undergone in the composition and rehearsal 
of the brilliant play, in four acts and eleven scenes, 


THE COLLAPSE OF THE IDEAL 265 


destined to be the opening attraction of Mr. James Top- 
lofty's Spring Season at the West End Theater. She 
would dream thus paragraphically, whenever sh^ did 
dream, which was seldom, for her imaginative region was 
small. She was stupid and narrow, cold-hearted and 
mercenary. 

“Since I have loved you," Can warden would say, “I 
have been able to write of noble women. You have in- 
spired me; everything that is best in me comes from 
you; everything I have done that is good I owe to 

you. . . 

“You dear, exaggerating. Romantic Thing!" was in- 
variably the reply of Petronella. “And when we are 
married we shall have a 28 h.p. Gohard with nickel 
fittings and a changeable body, and a chauffeur in livery. 
I used to dream of a dear little private brougham when 
we were first engaged, but nobody who wants to be 
thought Anybody would have such an old-fashioned 
thing now. How the world is changing, isn't it, with 

motors and airships and Tubes to travel in?" 

***** 

The Haverstock Hill villa vibrated as she prattled, and 
the porch settled lower by the fraction of an inch. It 
was a July evening, and the lovers, arm-in-arm, paced 
up and down the damp and puddly graveled avenue 
under the liquid-soot-distilling lilacs and acacias. The 
refiection of a large fire danced upon the windows of 
Mrs. Lesser's drawing-room, and Petronella, despite the 
warmth of Canwarden's love, felt chilly. She wondered 
why Urban had pressed her to put on goloshes and a 
warm wrap after dinner and take this clammy evening 
stroll arm-in-arm with him. And then she was con- 
scious that the heart against which her right hand rested 
thumped heavily, and she felt his arm tremble, and re- 


^66 THE COLLAPSE OF THE IDEAL 


membered that at dinner her betrothed had shown a 
poor appetite in conjunction with a well-developed 
thirst. As pigs are said to feel wind coming, as cats — 
even the most sedate— set up their backs and sprint 
about the garden at the approach of a storm, Petronella 
instinctively felt that bad news was in the air. A more 
sentimental and much prettier girl might have antici- 
pated a shipwreck of the affections — expected to be told 
that Canwarden had found his Fate in another’s eyes. 
Petronella ’s previsions of disaster concerned only his 
banking account. It was that to which she was really 
referring when she said she felt that something had hap- 
pened. 

“It is true, dearest,” Canwarden said, with the kind 
of hoarse groan that he had not been able to extract 
from the leading young man in his last romantic drama 
even with the grappling-hooks of continued effort. 
“Something has happened. My great play — for that it 
is great I feel, and always shall, despite the slings and 
arrows of that eater of red meat, the Transatlantic critic 
. . . my great play, ‘The . . ” 

“I know, ‘The Popshop Hearse^ . . Petronella put 
in hurriedly. 

“No, no . . . ‘The Poisoned Curse, ^ corrected the 
author, with a wince. “My play, produced a fortnight 
ago at Barney and Keedler’s Classical Theater, New 
York, is a failure ... a blank and utter failure! Yes, 
yes 1 the management did cable to me to say it had been 
enthusiastically received. I showed the message to you, 
and you shared my gladness. But here — here is another 
cable from my agent, Loris K. Boodler, of Skyscraper 
Mansions, 49,000,000 Broadway, that says . . .” He 
drew a crackling, flimsy paper from his waistcoat pocket, 
and tried to unfold it with hands that shook. “I can’t 


THE COLLAPSE OF THE IDEAL 267 


read it because it's too dark, but I remember every 
word. ' Y our — play — taken — off — Saturday — following — 
production. Variety vaudeville substituted. Writing. 
Boodler* And I was looking forward to the author’s 
fees to” — he coughed in a choky way — ^‘to furnish our 
house and . . . and buy that motor-car you were talk- 
ing about. It ... it seemed so sure a thing! I had 
got such capital percentages; Barney and Keedler had 
cabled to say the play was a success. . . .” He choked. 
“And now! . . 

“You told me all that before, dear,” said Petronella. 
“But you have two other plays coming out, haven’t you, 
in London theaters? . . . West End houses. . . . And 
one failure doesn’t spell ruin. . . 

“One failure can break a dramatist, when it is a 
failure of this kind,” said her disconsolate lover. “Those 
two other plays are . . . were coming out at theaters 
held by the same lessees — Barney and Keedler, of the 
Mammoth American Dramatic Trust. And so, don’t 
you see, all my balloons are deflated at once. I’ve come 
down with a crash, and ... it hurts! But you will trust 
me, won’t you? You will go on believing in me, though 
I’ve had what technical people will call a set-back. And 
if our . . . our marriage must be delayed . . .” He 
stopped under one of the liquid soot-distilling lilacs, and 
caught Petronella in his arms, crushing the draperies 
arranged by her Hampstead dressmaker roughly against 
his damp evening overcoat. “You will not mind! . . . 
We will wait and hope, and love each other . . . love 
each other. . . . After all, while we are together, noth- 
ing is too hard to bear. . . .” 

Thus spoke Canwarden, counting his chickens ere their 
emergence from the shell, after the fashion of a young 
man too deeply in love to see clearly what manner of 


268 THE COLLAPSE OF THE IDEAL 


young woman his heart is set upon. But Petronella 
shivered, conscious that the Hampstead garden was 
clammy, and that the dazzling halo of coming fame and 
approaching prosperity had been banished from Can- 
warden’s brow. He stood before her, tall and straight, 
and sufficiently good to look at, with his bright brown 
eyes, straight, short nose, and sensitive, clean-shaven 
lips, though his curly hair, it must be added, was re- 
ceding too fast from a brow more bumpy than, according 
to the accepted canons of classical proportion, a brow 
should be. Upon his shirt-front a lilac had shed an 
inky tear, and his voice was husky with love and sorrow, 
not of an utterly selfish kind, as he promised Petronella 
to work hard, never to cease working until he had re- 
gained the lost ground. 

^‘But you never may! . . she said, and the doubt 
in those shallow blue eyes — he never had realized before 
that they were shallow — pierced him to the soul. “And 
Nora will be married before me, and she is two years 
younger, and everybody in Hampstead will say . . 

Canwarden, with heat, devoted Hampstead to the 
devil. I am not defending him. Petronella thought him 
brutal, coarse, and profane. Women of Petronella’s kind 
always enthusiastically uphold the dignity of the devil. 
She told him what she thought, and she wound up in 
the red-papered hall of the one-sided Hampstead villa 
by saying that he and she had better part. She added, 
as women of Petronella’s type invariably do add, that 
the dead past might bury its dead. And she drew off her 
engagement ring — an olivine, imposed by a Bond Street 
jeweler upon the too-confiding Canwarden as an emer- 
ald, harnessed between two indifferent diamonds of yel- 
lowish hue — and thrust it back upon him, and went 
upstairs to her room and locked the door; and as the 


THE COLLAPSE OF THE IDEAL ^69 


hall door banged violently and the iron avenue gates 
clashed behind the haggard Canwarden, his late be- 
trothed sat down to pen a little note to Percy Fbcker — 
a young man without a chin, junior partner of a small 
but pushing firm of shipbrokers at No, 35,000 Cornhill. 
The porch made up its mind and sat down that night, 
and Percy the chinless called upon the following even- 
ing, and was compelled to enter his Love’s bower by the 
back-door. 

And Canwarden, seeing volcanic ruins smoking where 
his Castle of Hope had stood, wandered the West End 
and the Strand like a thing accursed. He went into his 
club, and men slapped him on the shoulder and con- 
gratulated him upon the New York success. They would 
learn the truth later, he said to himself, and then they 
would chuckle and sneer. The rustling of the cablegram 
in his waistcoat pocket whispered ^‘Yes s’s’.'” Mean- 
while he had no appetite for solid food, and, quenching 
the thirst that consumed him with iced brandy-and- 
soda, he, Canwarden, usually the most temperate of 
men, realized how easily spanned is the gulf that severs 
the sober man from the inebriate. He might, perhaps, 
have crossed it for good and all had he not chanced to 
pass the invitingly open door of Crow’s Transatlantic 
Bureau of Exchange. The shipping advertisements 
loomed large and gaily-colored in the window ; passenger 
lists and railway guides hung from hooks upon the walls, 
and lay in piles upon the counter, and a civil clerk and 
an attractive girl with squirrel-colored hair were busy 
over ledgers and things. Prompted by his guardian 
angel Canwarden went in and asked for the New York 
papers. The mail was just in, and he got them, and, 
leaning on the polished shelf-desk where people write out 
code telegrams, he turned to the theatrical column. His 


270 THE COLLAPSE OF THE IDEAL 


drama, The Poisoned Curses had been withdrawn a fort- 
night ago from the stage of Barney and Keedler’s The- 
ater — slain as a thing unfit to live — and a variety vaude- 
ville substituted in its stead. Did not the cablegram — 
Loris K. Boodler’s cablegram — say so? He would see 
the hideous announcement for himself, and then go 
under, as men went who had broken the golden bowl of 
Youth and Hope, and were too weary to go on fighting. 

Could it . . . could it be a mistake . . . ? Was the 
play a success after all? It looked like it. For in flam- 
boyant type The Poisoned Curse: a Romantic Drama in 
four acts and eleven scenes, by Urban Canwarden, was 
announced by the New York Trumpeter as being pre- 
sented to-night, and every night, and to-day at 1.30, and 
Saturday matinees as announced. The play had been 
running when Loris K. Boodler sent the cablegram an- 
nouncing its withdrawal; the play was running now — 
would run. Canwarden’s hands shook so that the flimsy 
news-sheet tore. He glanced at the girl with the squirrel- 
colored hair and apologized, saying that he would pay 
for the paper. She smiled, and he found that he was 
able to smile back again. He despatched a short but 
expressive cablegram to the office of Mr. Loris K. Bood- 
ler, relieving that smart and go-ahead agent from fur- 
ther responsibility in connection with the collection of 
his percentages, and walked out of Crow’s Transatlantic 
Bureau of Exchange with his head up — a free man. 

Petronella married Percy Flicker. Canwarden is a 
flourishing and popular dramatist, with a thumping bank 
balance and a permanent predilection for bachelor exist- 
ence. All the female villains in his plays are blondes. 
The stage directions, underlined in red, run thus: Enter 
So-and-SOf a fair and slightly formed woman of barely 
thirty, with icy and repellent blue eyes and hair of a 


THE COLLAPSE OF THE IDEAL m 


pale and sunless straw color. She conveys the impres- 
sion of cold insincerity and self-centered absorption, and 
her hard and mocking laugh falls gratingly upon the 
ear.” Which goes to prove that Human Nature is and 
never will be anything but Human Nature until the 
Curtain drops. 


THE HAND THAT FAILED 


F our men were seated about a round table, with 
dessert and wine upon it, in the dining-room of a 
luxuriously furnished house in a fashionable street in 
the West End of London — a street which is the Eldorado 
of the struggling professional man, the Tom Tiddler’s 
ground of successful members of the faculties of surgery 
and medicine. The aroma of Turkish coffee and choice 
Havanas was warm and fragrant upon the air, and the 
Bishop consented to a second Benedictine. His left- 
hand neighbor was a dry-faced, courteous gentleman, a 
King’s Counsel, famous by reason of several causes 
celebres. The third man at table was merely a hard- 
working, small-earning practitioner of medicine and 
surgery, settled in a populous suburb of the high-lying 
North. Coming to the host, with whom the Highgate 
Doctor had walked the hospitals in his student days, one 
may describe him as a world-famous Consulting Spe- 
cialist and operator; one of the kings of the scalpel, the 
bistoury, and the curette; a man of medals, orders, and 
scientific titles innumerable. Forty-three years of age, 
shortly about to be married (to a widowed niece of the 
Bishop), and in excellent spirits — a thought too excel- 
lent, perhaps. . . . 

‘‘Wants rest, decidedly. Pupils of the eyes unnatur- 
ally dilated, circulation not what it ought to be. Over- 
done. . . . Changed color when the servant dropped a 
fork just now. ... He had better take care!” said the 


THE HAND THAT FAELED 


273 


Highgate Doctor to himself. He had to deal with many 
cases of nervous breakdown up Highgate way, where 
there are so many compositors and clerks and journal- 
ists. But the Bishop and the King’s Counsel had never 
seen the Distinguished Surgeon look more fit, and po 
they told him. 

“What makes it more remarkable, in my poor opin- 
ion” — the Bishop, employing his favorite phrase, emptied 
his liqueur-glass and folded his plump, white hands — 
“being that our distinguished friend here” — he waved 
the fattest and whitest of his thumbs toward his host — 
“seldom, if ever, takes a holiday.” 

“When,” said the Distinguished Surgeon, playing with 
a gold fruit-knife belonging to a set which had formed 
part of the First Napoleon camp-equipment at Leipsic, 
“when a professional man’s brain is absolutely clear, his 
nerves infallibly steady; when his digestion, sleep, ap- 
petite are unimpaired by any amount of physical and 
mental labor; when his hand is the ready, unerring, un- 
flinching servant of his will at all times and all seasons, 
what need has that man of rest and relaxation?” The 
strong, supple, finely-modeled hand went on playing 
with the historical fruit-knife, as its owner added: 
“Work is my play! For change of air, give me change 
of experience; for change of scene, new cases, or fresh 
developments of familiar ones. The excitement of the 
gaming table, or any other form of excitement, would be 
a poor exchange for the sensations of the operator, the 
skilled, experienced, unerring operator, who calculates to 
the fraction of an inch the depth of the incision his 
scalpel makes in the body of the anaesthetized patient 
extended on the glass-table before him. Life or Death 
are his to give, and the trembling of the balance one 
way or the other is to be guided and controlled by his 


^74 


THE HAND THAT FAH^ED 


unerring eye, his unerring brain, and his skilled, infalli- 
ble hand. He holds the balances of Fate — he guides 
and controls Destiny, and knows his power and glories 
in it. He is a supreme artist — not in clay or marble, 
gold or silver, pigments or enamels — but in living flesh 
and blood!” 

The Bishop shifted in his chair uneasily, and turned a 
little pale about the gills. The removal of the episcopal 
appendix some months previously had preserved to the 
Church of England one of its principal corner-stones; 
and the neat, red seam underneath the Bishop’s apron on 
the right side, on the spot that would have been covered 
by the vest-pocket of an ordinary layman, twitched and 
tingled. And the King’s Counsel, who had once under- 
gone a minor operation for throat-trouble, hurriedly 
gulped down a mouthful of port. The Highgate Doctor 
alone answered, fixing his steel-rimmed pince-nez se- 
curely on his nose, and tilting his chin so as to get the 
host’s face well into focus: “He is a supreme artist, as 
you say, and he delights in his work. But supposing him 
to delight too much? Supposing him to have arrived at 
such a pass that he cannot live without the excitement 
of it! — that he indulges in the exercise of his beneficent 
profession as a cocaine-drinker or hashish-eater, or 
morphinomaniac, indulges in the drug that destroys him, 
morally and physically — how long will he retain in their 
perfection the faculties which have made him what he 
is?” 

“As long as he chooses!” said the Distinguished Sur- 
geon, putting down the gold fruit-knife, and rising with 
the easy air of the well-bred host. “He is no longer a 
mere man, but a highly-geared and ingeniously-planned 
machine, in all that concerns the peculiar physical func- 
tions brought to bear upon the exercise of his profession. 


THE HAND THAT FAH^ED 


275 


To lie idle, for such a machine, means rust and ruin; to 
work unceasingly is to increase facility and gain in 
power, and, provided it be carefully looked after — and 
I assure you my nuts and bearings receive the necessary 
amount of attention! — the machine of which I speak 
may go on practically forever!’^ And he ushered his 
guests through the folding doors into his luxurious con- 
sulting-room. 

^‘Unless there happened,^^ put in the King’s Counsel, 
‘‘to be a screw loose?” 

‘^My dear fellow,” said the Distinguished Surgeon, 
with a smile, “my screws are never neglected, I have 
assured you. The machine won’t come to grief that 
way!” 

“It might come to grief in another way,” said the 
Highgate Doctor in a queer voice. “The Inventor might 
stop it Himself, just to prove to His handiwork that it 
was a machine — and something more!” 

At this remark, plopped into the middle of the calm 
duck-pond of sociality, the Bishop looked pained, as 
might an elderly spinster of severe morals at an allusion 
savoring of impropriety. The King’s Counsel, feeling 
for the Bishop, turned the conversation; but the Distin- 
guished Surgeon and the Highgate Doctor were at it 
again, hammer and tongs, in a minute. 

“I do not simply believe I shall not fail, my dear 
fellow! I know I shall not! As for ” (the Distin- 

guished Surgeon, sitting smoking in his Louis Quinze 
consulting-chair, mentioned a certain operation in ab- 
dominal surgery, delicate, difficult, and dangerous in the 
extreme) “I have performed it hundreds of times, suc- 
cessfully, within the last twelvemonth, leaving minor 
operations — scores of them” — he waved the scores aside 
with a movement of the supple hand — ^^‘entirely out of 


276 


THE HAND THAT FAH^ED 


the question! At the Hospital to-day’^ (mentioning the 
name of a great public institution) operated in seven 
cases, bringing up the number to one thousand and one. 
The last was the most interesting case I have met with 
for some time, presenting complications rendering the 
use of the knife both difficult and risky, but ” 

The sharp whirring tingle of the telephone bell punctu- 
ated the Distinguished Surgeon’s sentence: “But she’ll 
pull through; I guarantee it! We’ll have the bandages 
off in three weeks. She’ll be walking about before the 
month’s out like the others!” 

“Under Providence let us hope so!” said the Bishop, 
encircled by a halo of fragrant cigar smoke. “Thank 
you, yes, I will take a whisky-and-soda. Without pre- 
sumption, let us hope so, remembering, trusting in — arah 
— the — arah — the Divine assurance.” 

“You may take the assurance from me, my lord!” 
said the Distinguished Surgeon. He got up and went to 
the fireplace (carved by Adam), and leaned one elbow 
lightly on the mantelshelf — an easy attitude, but instinct 
with pride and power. “As I have said. Case One Thou- 
sand and One is a difficult case. I could name surgeons 
of repute who would have hesitated to operate; but, 
given the requisite skill and the necessary care, failure, 
I hold, is out of the question. I have never failed yet — 
I do not intend to fail. It’s impossible!” 

The second shrill, imperative summons of the tele- 
phone bell ended the Distinguished Surgeon’s sentence. 

“Teh! They’re ringing ye up on the telephone from 
somewhere,” said the Highgate Doctor. 

“Find out what they want, Donald, there’s a good 
fellow,” said the Distinguished Surgeon, buttonholed by 
the Bishop, whose urbane benevolence had creased into 


THE HAND THAT FAH^ED 27T 

smiles tinctured with roguishness, as he related a clerical 
after-dinner story. 

And the Highgate Doctor rang back, and unhooked 
the receiver and cried: “Halloa?’^ and listened to the 
thin ghost of a voice that droned and tickled at his ear, 
and turned toward the Distinguished Surgeon a face 
that had suddenly been bleached of all color. 

^‘Well, who is it?” the Distinguished Surgeon asked. 

^Tt’s the House Surgeon at the Hospital. Perhaps 
ye would speak to him yourself?” the Highgate Doctor 
said thickly; and the Distinguished Surgeon, released 
by the chuckling Bishop, strolled over and took the 
Highgate Doctor’s place at the receiver. 

^‘Halloa! Yes, it’s Sir Arthur Blank!” he called, and 
the ghostly voice came back. . . . “One of the abdomi- 
nal sections in the Mrs. Solomon Davis Ward . . . 
Number Seven . . . Mrs. Reed . . . Haemorrhage. . . . 
Imminent danger . . . collapse. . . . Come at once!” 

The Distinguished Surgeon glanced round, with eyes 
that were sunk in pits quite newly dug. The Bishop, still 
in his anecdotage, was buttonholing the King’s Counsel. 
Plainly they had not overheard. And as the Distin- 
guished Surgeon took out his handkerchief and wiped the 
cold damps from a face that had gone gray and shiny, he 
knew relief. He avoided looking point-blank at the 
Highgate Doctor as he made his courteous excuses to 
his guests. “An urgent case — suddenly called away for 
an hour. My dear Lord, my dear Entwhistle, my dear 
Donald, entertain yourselves for that space of time, and 
don’t deprive me of a pleasant end to this delightful 
evening!” 

But the Bishop, recently wedded for the third time, 
took leave, accepting his host’s offer of dropping him 
at his hotel, and the pair got into fur coats and a snug 


278 


THE HAND THAT FAH^ED 


ante-brougham and drove away together. Soon after, 
somebody from the Chancery Buildings came with 
an urgent summons for the King’s Counsel, and he 
melted away with regrets, and the Highgate Doctor sat 
in the luxurious consulting-room, and started at every 
stoppage of swift wheels in the streets. 

The silent servants came and looked to the fire, the 
Pompadour clock upon the mantel chimed eleven! And 
then, looking up out of a brown study, the Highgate 
Doctor saw his host returned, and started at his worn 
and haggard aspect. As the demure servant relieved 
him of his coat and hat, and vanished, the Distinguished 
Surgeon dropped into an easy-chair and sat shading his 
face with the right hand, whose steadiness he had so 
vaunted. And that infallible, unerring hand shook as 
if with palsy. 

The Highgate Doctor could bear no more. . . . 

“0 man,” he said — in moments of excitement his ac- 
cent savored of from north of the Tweed — “dinna sit 
glowering and shaking there 1 I ken weel what has hap- 
pened! Your pride has got the killing thrust; she is in 
her death-pangs at this minute I’m talking, and you 
stand face to face wi’ One you have denied! Am I richt 
or no?” 

The Distinguished Surgeon moved the shaking hand 
and said, not in the calm level tone the Highgate Doctor 
knew, but one jerky and uneven: 

^^You are right! You shall know the truth, though it 
places my reputation at your mercy. . . .” 

“Forget your reputation a meenute,” said the High- 
gate Doctor. “As to Case One Thousand and One . . . 
is the woman dead?” 

“No . . .” said the other— “no, I reached the Hospital 


THE HAND THAT FAILED 279 

in time ... we called up the chart-nurse and the Matron, 
had her taken up to the theater and 

^Tound that ye had bungled — for once in your life I 
said the Highgate Doctor. ‘‘And weel for you, if not for 
your patient, that it is so. The ligature had slipped, I 
take it, being insecurely tied?” 

The Distinguished Surgeon looked him steadily be- 
tween the eyes and answered: 

“The ligature was not tied at all I A grosser instance 
of neglect I never met with.” He got up and leaned 
against the mantelshelf, folding his arms. “I said so 
pretty plainly, and I have made a minute on the Hos- 
pital register to that effect. I shall also draw the atten- 
tion of the Committee to the matter without delay I” 

The Highgate Doctor blew his nose violently. His 
eyeglasses were misty. 

“Ye have censured yourself? Ye will report yourself? 
0 man! I kenned ye were a great one, but ye have 
never been so great — in my eyes — as ye are this night!” 

“Thank you!” said the Distinguished Surgeon, as the 
two men gripped hands. “And — Donald, old fellow — I 
am going to take a holiday!” 

“Where is the whisky-and-soda?” said the Highgate 
Doctor gleefully. 


HIS SILHOUETTE 


H e walked down Upper Bond Street, after leaving 
his chambers, half-way up on the left-hand side. 
The groimd-floor is occupied by the only London pur- 
veyor of American chewing-gum, who does a tremendous 
business in the imported article, and the shop is crowded 
all day by ladies, young and old, whose jaws, even in 
moments of repose from conversation, are in perpetual 
motion. Englishwomen do not yet chew gum. Let us 
hope that our wives, sweethearts, sisters, and cousins 
will be slow to acquire what, in my opinion, is an un- 
pleasant habit, but too suggestive of arboreal tendencies 
inherited from anthropoid ancestors.^’ 

The man who was telling the story stretched out his 
hand across the coffee-cups to select a toothpick. The 
man who opposed him at the table promptly annexed 
the glass-and-silver receptacle containing the article re- 
quired. 

“The original ape,’^ he said, “probably employed a 
twig. I cannot encourage you in a practice you so 
strongly denounce. Waiter, take these things away! 
Bonson, my good fellow, let us hear your story — if it is 
worth hearing. If not, keep it to yourself. The man 
began by walking down Bond Street. There is nothing 
original in that. I myself do it every day without being 
the hero of a story.” 

“This man was the hero of a tragedy,” said the man 
who was telling the story. “Other people might smile 
at it for a farce — it was a tragedy to him.” 

280 


HIS SILHOUETTE 281 

^‘Where did the horror of it come in?” asked the other 
man. 

^‘Under Shelmadine’s waistcoat,” said the man who 
had been addressed as Bonson. ^‘Shelmadine was losing 
his figure, which had been his joy and pride and the 
delight of the female eye ever since he left Oxford, 
without his degree, and, thanks to the influence of his 
uncle. Colonel Sir Barberry Bigglesmith, K.C.B., Assist- 
ant Under-Secretary to the Ordnance Office Council, 
took up a Second Division Higher-grade Clerkship at 
£280 per annum, which sufficiently supplemented his 
younger son’s allowance of £500 to make it feasible to 
get along with some show of decency — don’t you follow 
me?” 

“If I had followed this beggar down Upper Bond 
Street,” hinted the other man, knocking an ash off a 
long, slim High Dutch cigar, “where would he have led 
me?” 

“Into his tailor’s,” said the man who had been ad- 
dressed as Bonson promptly. “He walked in there regu- 
larly every day on his way to the War Office. Clothes 
were his passion — in fact, he simply couldn’t live with- 
out clothes!” 

“Could we?” answered the other man simply. 

“I have heard that Europeans shipwrecked on the 
palm-fringed shores of a Pacific Island,” said Bonson, 
“have managed to do very well without them. Under 
those circumstances, let me tell you, Shelmadine would 
still have managed to be well dressed. He would have 
evolved style out of cocoa-fiber and elegance out of 
banana-leaves, or he would have died in the attempt. I 
am trying to convey to you that he had a genius for 
clothes. He evolved ideas which sartorial artists were 
only too happy to carry out. He gave bootmakers hints 


282 


HIS SILHOUETTE 


which made their reputations. He would run over to 
Paris every month or so to look at Le Bargy’s hat and 
cravats. He never told anyone where he got his walking 
sticks, but they were wonderful. I tell you ” 

^‘Every man likes to be well dressed,” said the man 
who was listening to the story, ‘‘but this beggar seems 
to have had coats and trousers on the brain.” 

“Rather,” said the narrator. “He thought of clothes, 
dreamed of clothes — lived for clothes alone. Garments 
were his fad, his folly, his passion, his mania, his dearest 
object in life. Men consulted him — men who wanted to 
be particularly well got-up couldn’t do better than put 
themselves in Shelmadine’s hands. He permitted no 
servile copying of the modes and styles he exhibited on 
his person. ‘Forge my name,’ he said to a fellow once, 
‘but never copy the knot of my necktie!’ Chap took the 
advice, and did forge his name — to the tune of £60. 
Shelmadine would not prosecute. He was planning an 
overcoat — a kind of Chesterfield, cut skirty — with which 
he made a sensation at Doncaster this year, and when a 
certain Distinguished Personage condescended to order 
one like it, Shelmadine made the three he had got, quite 
new, and wickedly expensive, into a parcel, poured on 
petrol, and applied a match. Shut himself up for three 
days, and appeared on the fourth with a perfectly new 
silhouette.” 

“A perfectly new what?” said the listener, with cir- 
cular eyes. 

“Shelmadine’s creed was that for a man to look thor- 
oughly well dressed he must have a perfect silhouette. 
Every line about him must be perfect. The sweep of 
the shoulders, the spring of the hips, the arch over the 
instep, and so forth, must display the cut of scissors 
wielded by an artist — not a mere workman. Now, on 


HIS SILHOUETTE 


283 


this particular morning, not so very long ago, it had 
been brought home to him, as he looked in his full- 
length, quadruple-leaved, swing-balance, double' lever- 
action cheval glass, that the reflection it gave back to 
him was not quite satisfactory. His silhouette did not 
satisfy him. Then all at once came with a rush the 
overwhelming discovery that he was ” 

^^Getting potty said the listener. “Those Govern- 
ment clerkships play the devil with a man’s waist. 
Nothing to do but eat, drink, sleep, walk, or drive to 
the Ofiice and sit in a chair gumming up envelopes or 
drawing heads on the blotting-paper when you’re there, 
until you fall asleep. Once you’re asleep, you don’t 
wake till it’s time to go home. Consequently you de- 
velop adipose tissue.” He yawned. 

“Do you suppose,” asked the teller of the tale, with 
large contempt, “that Shelmadine lived the life of one 
of those human marmots — Shelmadine, a man so sensi- 
tively, keenly alive to the beauty of Shape, Form, Line, 
and Proportion? Do you dream that he lightly risked 
the inevitable result of indulgence in the pleasures of 
the table or the delights of drowsiness? If so, you are 
wrong. He rose at 5 a.m., winter and summer, in town 
or country, and after a hot bath, followed by a cold 
douche, pursued a course of physical exercises until 
seven, when he breakfasted on milkless tea, dry toast, 
or gluten biscuits” — the other man shuddered — ^‘^with, 
perhaps, a little plain boiled fish, its lack of flavor un- 
disguised by Worcester sauce or any other condiment.” 

“Horrible!” said the other man. “I once tried . . .” 

“After breakfast, in all weathers, he walked five miles, 
within the Radius, returning to dress for the day. Anon 
he would saunter down Bond Street, look in at the shops, 
where he was adored, and criticize the new models sub- 


284 


HIS SILHOUETTE 


mitted to him, as only Shelmadine could, show himself 
at his Club, stroll in the Park, and get to the Ordnance 
OflBce about eleven. The floors at Whitehall are solidly 
built, consequently his habit of jumping backward and 
forward over the office-table when he felt his muscles 
dangerously relaxed, met with little, if any, opposition 
in the Department. Dumb-bells, of course, were always 
ready to hand. At his Club the invariable luncheon 
supplied to him was the eye of a grilled cutlet, a glass of 
claret and water, eight stewed prunes, and, of course, 
more gluten biscuits. He shunned fat-forming foods 
more than he would the devil!” 

“And made his life a hell!” said the other man, with 
conviction. 

“My dear fellow,” said the relater, “you can’t under- 
stand what a man’s life is or is not until you have seen 
both sides of it. A Second Division Higher-Grade War 
Office clerkship allows of a good deal of liberty. Picture 
Shelmadine as the enfant gate of Society, followed, 
stared at, caressed and courted, by the smartest femi- 
nine leaders of fashion, as well as by the swellest men, as 
the acknowledged Oracle in Clothes. There’s a position 
for a young man single-handed to have achieved. To 
be the vogue — the rage — the coq de village — the village 
being London — and at twenty-seven.” 

“Exhausting,” said the other man, “to keep up, but 
sufficiently agreeable. Quite sufiiciently agreeable! And 
I realize that at the psychological moment, when the 
fellow discovered that his figure had begun to run to 
seed, he sustained a shock — kind of cold moral and 
mental douche a professional beauty gets when her toilet 
glass shows her the first crow’s-foot. Did your friend 
have hysterics and ask his valet for sal-volatile? I 
should expect it of him!” 


HIS SILHOUETTE 


285 


‘^Shelmadine did not employ a man/^ said the teller 
of the tale, fixing his eyeglass firmly in its place, '^to do 
anything but brush his clothes. For all other purposes 
connected with the toilet he preferred a Swiss lady’s- 
maid. Do not misunderstand, my friend,” he added 
sternly, as the listener exploded in a guffaw of laughter. 
‘^Honi soit . . . the rest of the quotation is familiar to 
you. And Mariette Duchatel had been strongly recom- 
mended to him by his aunt. Lady Bigglesmith, as a most 
desirable person for the post of housekeeper. She was 
at least fifty — retained the archaeological remains of 
good looks, and owned a moustache a buddin’ Guards- 
man might be jealous of, by Jingo! But her heart had 
remained youthful, or we may so conjecture.” 

begin to tumble to the situation of the swelling 
subject of your story,” said the other man, pouring out 
a Benedictine. “When your elderly housekeeper happens 
to be in love with you, it is bad enough. Things become 
complicated when the victim of your charms happens to 
be your maid. Continue!” 

“A visit to his tailor’s on the day on which my story 
begins,” said Bonson, “convinced Shelmadine that — in 
fact, his outlines were becoming indefinite. This will 
not do, sir,’ said his tailor, a grave and himself a portly 
personage, Vith your reputation for silhouette to keep 
up — and at your years. We will let out the garment one 
inch — a thing I decline to do even for Royal Personages, 
as destructive of the design — and as this is now the 
Autumn Season I recommend you to obtain leave. 
Kliimpenstein in the Tyrol has a reputation for reducing 
weight; its waters have done wonders for several of my 
customers, and the Rittenberg affords several thousand 
feet of climbing opportunity to tourists who wish to be 
quickly rid of superfluous girth. But, first of all, I 


280 HIS SILHOUETTE 

should consult Dr. Quox, of Harley Street. Good- 
morning.^ 

‘^Quox of Harley Street went into Shelmadine’s case, 
elicited the fact that his maternal grandfather had 
turned the scale at twenty stone, that his mother. Lady 
Fanny, hadn’t seen her own shoe-buckles for eighteen 
years, except when the shoes weren’t on — don’t you 
twig? — and that he possessed what Quox pleased to call 
‘a record of family obesity.’ So Shelmadine, who, in 
spite of rigorous diet and redoubled physical exercises, 
kept getting more and more uncertain in his outlines, 
rushed frantically off to Kliimpenstein in the Tyrol, with 
what was, for him, quite a limited wardrobe. He drank 
the water — infernally nasty, too — and climbed the Rit- 
tenberg religiously, without finding his lost silhouette. 
Only on the Dolomittenweg, a pine-shaded promenade 
of great promise in the flirtatious line, he did find — a 
girl. And, despite his anxiety with regard to his sil- 
houette, they had an uncommonly pleasant time to- 
gether.” 

^^He had left his lady’s-maid behind, I presume?” 
hinted the listener. 

‘‘He had,” said Bonson. “When he got back to Lon- 
don, though, Mariette met him with a shriek. ‘Heavens!’ 
cried she, throwing up her hands, ‘the figure of Monsieur 
— the silhouette on which he justly prided himself, where 
— where has it gone? Helas! those beautiful clothes 
that have arrived from the tailor’s during the absence of 
Monsieur — jamais de la vie will he be able to get into 
them, j^en suis baba in contemplating the extraordinary 
embonpoint of Monsieur.’ 

“ ‘Hang it, Mariette!’ said Shelmadine, quite shocked; 
‘am I so beastly bulged as all that comes to?’ Mariette 
broke down at that, and went into floods of tears. It 


HIS SILHOUETTE 


287 


took the best part of a bottle of Cognac to bring her 
round, and then Shelmadine set about overhauling his 
wardrobe.’^ 

^‘Nothing would meet, I presume?” hinted the man 
who had been listening. 

^‘Not by three finger-breadths,” said the man who was 
telling the story. ^Tlwondllellm Wells in North Wales 
has got a kind of reputation for making stout kine lean. 
Shelmadine got extension of leave on account of be- 
reavement. . . .” 

^‘When a man loses his figure he may be said to be 
bereaved!” nodded the listener. 

“Shelmadine tried the Wells, without success. All he 
ate was weighed out in ounces, all he drank measured 
out with the most grudging care ; nothing was allowed to 
enter his system that contained anything conducive to 
the accumulation of the hated tissue, but nothing could 
keep him from putting it on!” 

“Poor brute!” said the hearer. 

“He had gone to the Wells a distinctly roundabout 
figure. He came back a potty young man! Despair 
preyed upon his vitals without reducing his bulk, how- 
ever. He saw ^Slimaline’ advertised.” 

“I know,” said the listener. “A harmless vegetable 
compound which reduces the bulkiest middle-aged hu- 
man figure of either sex in the course of a few weeks to 
the slender proportions of graceful youth. Three-and- 
sixpence a bottle, sent secretly packed, to any address 
in the United Kingdom. Pis.'” 

“He then,” continued the narrator, “went in for 
Trosher’s Fat-Reducing Soap.’ Perhaps you are not 
acquainted with that compound, which is rubbed briskly 
into the — ah — ^the ” 

“Personality,” put in the other man. 


288 


HIS SILHOUETTE 


. . Until a strong lather is obtained. The lather 
proved ineffectual; Shelmadine took to stays.’^ 

^Thew!” puffed the other man. 

The first man continued: 

“As the weary weeks went on he was compelled to re- 
turn to his desk at Whitehall — crouching in a taxicab to 
avoid observation. But concealment was useless. From 
the Department allotted to the Second Division Higher- 
Grade clerks the secret crept out, and Society pounced 
upon it and tore it to shreds, shrieking.’^ 

“Like ’em,” said the listener — “like ’em!” 

“That night, as Shelmadine sat in his dainty dressing- 
room surrounded by mountains of costly and elegant 
clothes, which, though only of the previous season’s 
make, would no longer accommodate his proportions,” 
went on Bonson — “lounging clothes, shooting clothes, 
walking clothes of all descriptions — London did not con- 
tain a wretcheder man. The exquisitely chosen waist- 
coats, the taffetas shirts of the once slim dandy of the 
War Office — a world too narrow for the fat man who 
now represented him — were in piles about him. Dozens 
of lovely gloves in all the newest shades — squirrel-gray, 
dead-leaf yellow, Havana-brown, chrysanthemum-buff 
— were scattered around by the hands that were now too 
stout to wear them. Piles of boots — afternoon boots, 
with uppers of corduroy leather, gray, fawn, or the white 
antelope, emblematical of the blameless pattern of vir- 
tue; walking boots, shooting boots, and shoes of all de- 
scriptions; slippers in heliotrope, rose-petal pink, and 
lizard-skin green, obscured the furniture. The pedal 
extremities that had bulged beyond all reasonable limits 
must now be accommodated in large Number Nines. 
Even Shelmadine’s dressing gowns — foulard silk, lined 
with cashmere — had declined to contain him.” 


HIS SILHOUETTE 


289 


Ton my word, you make me sorry for the idiot, 
said the listener; ^‘mere clothes-peg, as he seems to have 
been!’^ 

“Suicide — the thought of suicide had occurred to him.’^ 

“He ought to have swallowed a set of enamel evening 
buttons or a set of five jeweled tie-pins,’’ suggested the 
listener, “and taken leave of the world in an appropriate 
manner.” 

“I won’t go so far as to say that he would not have 
done something desperate,” continued the man who was 
telling the story, “had not Mariette — who may or may 
not have suspected that things were getting to a desper- 
ate pitch — appeared upon the scene. Toor lamb! thou 
art in despair’ — thus she addressed Shelmadine in the 
affectionate idiom with which her native language 
abounds — ^confide in Mariette, who alone can restore 
the silhouette that seems for ever lost to thee. Seems 
only. Monsieur; for at the bidding of me, myself, it will 
return. A little condition is attached to the recovery of 
thy figure, my child — not to be carried out if I cannot 
be as good as my word. Passe moi la casse, je te pas- 
serai le sene. All I want. Monsieur, is senna for my 
rhubarb — ^your written promise to marry Mariette 
Duchatel, daughter of Marius Duchatel, druggist of 
Geneva, if within three months you recover your beau- 
tiful figure. What do you say? Is it a bargain? Will 
you be fat and free, or slim and no longer single? 
Speak, then! You agree? Pour sur! I thought you 
would!’ ” 

“And did he marry his lady’s-maid?” asked the lis- 
tening man quite eagerly. 

“He did not,” said the teller of the tale, “though he 
was very near it. Fortunately for Shelmadine, the girl 
he had met on the Dolomittenweg Promenade stepped 


^90 


HIS SILHOUETTE 


in. She was an American, original, independent, and 
determined. When Shelmadine wrote — on Ordnance 
Office paper — to her in Paris, saying that Fate had 
stepped in between them, and that she never could be 
his, she asked the reason why. Not getting a satisfac- 
tory answer, she ran over to London to see for herself 
. . . bringing her mother — a vast person, who wore a 
diamond tiara, mittens, and diamond shoulder-straps in 
the evening, and carried them in a hip-bag by day — 
with her.” 

“The American mother is an appendage,” said the 
listener, “rather than a necessity.” 

“The sight of Shelmadine, who had expanded like a 
balloon in the filling-shed since the happy days at 
Klumpenstein, was to Miss Van Kyper — Miss Mamie 
Van Kyper was her complete name,” went on the man 
who had been called Bonson — “an undoubted shock.” 

“Of course,” agreed the man who was being told the 
story. 

“They met at the Carlton Hotel, where she had en- 
gaged a suite of reception-rooms for the interview.” 

“Not being quite certain whether one would hold 
Shelmadine?” suggested the other. 

“And the matter was thrashed out satisfactorily in 
five minutes, where an English girl would have taken 
five weeks. T guess there’s a good deal more of you 
than ever either of us expected there would be,’ said 
Mamie; ffiut I’ve got to choose between having too 
much of the man I love, or nothing at all. And it seems 
mighty unreasonable — when I felt plum-sure at Kliim- 
penstein that I could never have enough of you — that I 
should be miserable here in London because there hap- 
pens to be a good deal more than there was then.’ With 
a gush of warm and affectionate devotion she twined 


HIS SILHOUETTE 


291 


her arms as far round Shelmadine as they would go, 
and he, in accepting the fate that made him the hus- 
band of Miss Mamie Van Kyper, renounced his sil- 
houette for ever!’^ 

“But you said he got it back again!” said the second 
man. 

“He has,” said the first man. 

“Without the assistance of Mariette Duchatel, daugh- 
ter of Marius Duchatel, herbalist, of Geneva?” queried 
the second man. 

“Mariette,” said the first man, “on finding Shelmadine 
indisposed to accept her offer, first attempted to commit 
suicide in a cistern ; then threw up the sponge and made 
a clean breast of everything. A peculiar vegetable prep- 
aration, the secret of which she had had from her father, 
the herbalist of Geneva, administered in Shelmadine’s 
food, had caused the extraordinary accumulation of adi- 
pose tissue. The antidote, which she had promised to 
administer in the intervals of her own designs on my 
poor friend’s freedom, she confided to him, with bitter 
tears and many entreaties for forgiveness, before she 
went out of the Bond Street flat and Shelmadine’s life 
for ever.” 

“He married Miss Van Kyper immediately. He has 
an Assistant-Principal clerkship at the Ordnance Office; 
he has recovered his silhouette, but he no longer cares 
for clothes. You could scare rooks with him as he 
dresses now. Fact!” 

“Facts are confoundedly rummy things!” said the man 
who had been told the story. 


A NOCTURNE 


OU look,” He said nastily, as She raised her dis- 



X beveled coiffure and tear-blurred features from 
the center of a large muslin-flounced and covered cush- 
ion that sat at the end of the lounge that opened like a 
box, and held frilled petticoats — “you look like a wilted 
prize chrysanthemum.” 

She mechanically put up one hand to drive home de- 
serting hairpins into the mass of hair He had, in the 
lyrical days of early passion, celebrated as Corinthian 
gold-bronze, in a halting sonnet of which he was now 
profoundly ashamed. Stifling the recurrent hiccough 
that accompanies a liberal effusion of tears, she stared 
at him blankly. 

A silver timepiece, a wedding present from His 
mother, who had objected to the match, struck the mid- 
night hour. The thin sound of the last stroke, spun into 
tenuity by silence, died, and the clanking, hooting, nerve- 
shattering scurry of racing motor-buses went by like a 
wild hunt of iron-shackled fiends. A private car passed 
with its exhaust wailing like an exiled banshee, a be- 
lated hansom or two bowled along the sloppy asphalt, 
the raucous screech of a constable-defying nymph of the 
pavement rent the muggy air. He hardly heard it; he 
had been agreeing with his mother ever since the clock 
had struck. To-morrow he would go and look in at 
000, Sloane Street, and tell her that she had always 
known best. In imagination he was telling her so, when 
the sable-bordered tail of a dove-colored Indian cash- 




A NOCTURNE 


293 


mere dressing gown he had worshiped during the 
honeymoon swept across the feuille-rose carpet in the 
direction of the boudoir; Sada Yacco and Abe San, 
snub-nosed, blue-and-pink-bowed canine causes of the 
conjugal quarrel, joyously yelping in its wake. 

“Aren’t you going to bed?” He demanded. 

“You did not seem inclined to go to your dressing- 
room,” She returned with point, “and as I have to write 
an important letter, I may as well do it now!” 

He knew that the letter would be addressed to Her 
mother, who had also objected to the match, and would 
contain a daughter’s testimony to the correctness of the 
maternal judgment. Sada Yacco and Abe San, sitting 
on their haunches, with their pink tongues lolling, looked 
as though they knew it too. How he loathed those 
Japanese pugs! As he glared at them she gathered them 
up, one under each arm, protectingly. 

“Don’t be afraid!” He said, with the kind of laugh 
described by the popular novelist as grating; “I am not 
going to murder the little' brutes, after paying thirty 
pounds for the pair.” This was a touch of practical 
economy that made Her lip curl. “What I say is, I 
decline to have those animals galloping over me in the 
middle of the night.” 

“It is the middle of the night now,” She said, con- 
cealing a yawn behind three fingers — his wedding-ring 
and keeper upon one — “and they are not galloping over 
you. Men are supposed to be more logical than women. 
I have often wondered why since last May.” 

“We were married in May,” He said, folding his arms 
after a method much in favor with the popular novelist 
when heroes are grim. 

“It seems,” She said, rather drearily, “a long time 
ago.” 


A NOCTURNE 


a94< 

“If I had told you last May,” He retorted, “that I 
object to wake in the middle of the night with one 
Japanese pug snorting upon my — ah — my chest, and 
the other usurping the greater part of my pillow, you 
would have sympathized with my feeling, understood 
the objection, and relegated Sada Yacco and Abe San 
to their comfortable basket in the comer of the kitchen 
— or anywhere else,” he added hurriedly, seeing thievish 
early errand-boys on the tip of her tongue, “except your 
bedroom!” 

The popular novelist would have described her pose as 
“sculpturesque,” her expression as “fateful,” and her 
tone as “icy,” as She said: 

“The bedroom being mine, perhaps you will permit me 
to remind you that you possess one of your own, and 
that it is nearly one o’clock!” 

It was, in fact, a quarter-past twelve. But the door 
closed behind Him with such a terrific bang that the 
thready little utterance of the silver timepiece was com- 
pletely unnoticed. 

She put her hand to her throat, as a leading actress 
invariably does in moments of great mental stress, and 
uttered a choking little laugh of sorrow and bitterness. 
Men were really like this, then! Fool, oh, fool, to 
doubt! Had she not read, had she not seen, had not 
other women whispered? . . . And had her mother not 
plainly told her that this man — now her husband! — was 
more like other men than any of the other men re- 
sembled others? She sobbed a few sobs, dried her eyes, 
and prepared for bed. But when arrayed in white 
samite, mystic and wonderful, with the traces of tears 
effaced by perfumed hot water, the pinkness of nose and 
eyelids ameliorated by a dab or two of powder, the 
gold-brown tresses He had once sonneted, and now 


A NOCTURNE 


295 


sneered at, brushed out and beautiful, she took up the 
double basket owned by Sada Yacco and Abe San, 
placed it in the boudoir, returned for the canine 'couple, 
deposited them inside it, and then, resolutely shutting 
the door of communication upon their astonished coun- 
tenances, got into bed, cast one indifferent glance at the 
twin couch adjoining, shrugged her shoulders, and 
switched off the light. 

“S’n’ff!^^ 

That was Abe San snuffing inquiringly at the bottom 
of the door. Sada Yacco joined him, and they snuffed 
together. It was impossible to sleep, especially when 
they began to discuss the situation in whimpers and 
short yelps. Then they began to race round the boudoir, 
barking in whimpers. Then, just as She had made up 
her mind to buy peace by letting them in, there was a 
sharp bark from Sada Yacco, a joyous scrape at a dis- 
tant door, and a rattling of claws as the couple, emanci- 
pated from vile durance in the boudoir, joyously gal- 
loped down the passage. Then sleep soporifically stole 
over the senses of a wronged and brutally injured 
woman. It was not chilly, sloppy December: it was 
radiant July. She was not in a London flat. She was in 
a well-known back-water above Goring-on-Thames, 
cosy in a red-curtained punt, with a Japanese umbrella 
and two Japanese pugs and a husband, very handsome, 
almost quite new, madly devoted, not the quite plain, 
absolutely sulky, unspeakably disagreeable He now con- 
jecturally snoring on the opposite side of the passage. 
And so She slept and dreamed. 

He was not asleep. Propped up in his own beautiful 
little bed in his own cosy dressing-room, he was smoking 
a long cigar, and, as a further demonstration of bachelor 
independence, a brandy and Apollinaris stood untouched 


296 


A NOCTURNE 


beside him. By the electric light dangling over his head, 
where sardonically hung suspended a wooden Cupid — 
ha, ha! — he was perusing a book. She objected to read- 
ing in bed, that was why — ha, ha! again. The thin- 
paper volume, supposed to be an enlightening work on 
Oval Billiards, proved, by a tricky freak of Fate, to be 
an English translation of Thus Spake Zarathustra, This 
is what he read: 

“Calm is the bottom of my sea: 

Who would divine that it hideth droll monsters? 

Unmoved is my depth, yet it sparkleth with swimming enigmas 
and laughters. 

An imposing One saw I to-day — a solemn One, a penitent of the 
Spirit . . . 

Should he become weary of his imposingness, this imposing 
one ...” 

There came a scratch at the bottom of the door, a 
snuffling sound, and a sneeze he knew well. What did 
Abe San straying about draughty passages by night? 
But it was no business of his. Let the beast’s owner 
see to it. He read on: 

“Gracefulness belongeth to the generosity of the magnanimous.” 

Sada Yacco had joined her lord. Together they bur- 
rowed, mutually they snulfed. It was not to be borne. 
He got up and opened the door. Sada Yacco and Abe 
San rushed in, their tongues lolling, their eyes bulging 
with curiosity, and, after a brief excursion round the 
apartment, which they found small, fawned upon him 
with a sickening devotion. He scowled on the small 
black-and-white silky handfuls. Then he yielded to the 
impulse that plucked at his maxillary muscles and 
grinned. The little brutes were so painfully sorry for 


A NOCTURNE 297 

him. They were so clearly under the impression that 
he was in disgrace. 

He got back into bed, and lay there, grinning still, if 
unwillingly. Sada Yacco, with the forwardness of her 
sex, scrambled up and sat upon him. Abe San scratched 
at the coverlet imploringly, until, hoisted upward by the 
scruff, he, too, gained the desired haven. They had 
plainly come to stay, so He resigned himself with a 
sigh, switched off the electric light, and fell asleep before 
Abe San had turned round the regulation number of 
times. 

Meanwhile She, wakened by the toot of a belated 
motor-taxi, began to wonder whither the Japanese couple 
had strayed. Urged and wearied by the unbroken si- 
lence, she rose, arrayed herself in her dressing gown, 
armed herself with a lighted wax taper in a silver 
candlestick — another wedding present — and began a tour 
of discovery. The pugs had vanished. Had the maids 
yielded to their entreaties and taken them in? She 
listened at two doors; the steady snoring of the sleepers 
within was unmingled with snort or slumbering whimper 
of Sada and her mate. Then, returning, she noticed 
that His dressing-room door was open. 

Taper in hand. She went in. He was sound asleep, 
Sada Yacco sweetly slumbering on the surface covered 
by daylight with a waistcoat, Abe San curled up, a 
floss-silk ball, on the pillow by his ear. If he had seen 
her eyes as she bent over him, shading the light, he 
would have regained his old opinion of them in the 
twinkling of the tear She dropped upon His cheek. 

Don't say there are no such things as guardian angels. 
His woke him up just as She kissed him — the kiss was 
so light it would not have wakened him by itself. 


THE LAST EXPEDITION 


I 

S uppose that you see Captain Arthur Magellison, 
late of His Majesty’s Royal Navy, with the eyes 
of the writer’s remembrance, as a thick-set, fair man of 
middle height, neat in appearance and alert in bearing. 
His skin was a curious bleached bronze, and his wide- 
pupilled pale gray eyes, netted about with close, fine 
wrinkles, had looked on the awful desolation of the 
Arctic until something of its loneliness and terror had 
sunk into them and stamped itself upon the man’s brain, 
never to be effaced, or so it seemed to me. For his wife, 
once the marble Miss Dycehurst, who had not married 
a semi-Celebrity for nothing, took her husband much 
with her into London Society, and at gossipy dinner- 
tables and in crowded drawing-rooms; on the Lawn at 
Ascot and in a box on the Grand Stand at Doncaster, 
as on a Henley houseboat, and dining a polo tournament 
at Ranelagh, I have seen Magellison, to all appearance 
perfectly oblivious of the gay and giddy world about 
him, sitting, or standing with folded arms and bent 
head, and staring out with fixed and watchful eyes, over 
Heaven knows what illimitable wastes of snow-covered 
land or frozen ocean. . . . 

I have described Captain Arthur Magellison as a semi- 
Celebrity. Erstwhile Commander of the Third-class Ar- 
mored Destroyer Sidonia, he became, after his severance 
from the Royal Navy, and by reason of the adventures 
and hardships by him undergone as leader of the Scot- 
tish Alaskan Coastal Survey Expedition of 1906-1908, 
^98 


THE LAST EXPEDITION 


something of a hero. A series of lectures, delivered at 
the Edinburgh Hall of Science, in the course of which 
the explorer, by verbal descriptions as well as cinemato- 
graphic effects, completely disposed of the theory re- 
garding the existence of a range of active volcanoes to 
the north of Alaska, previously accepted by the Illumi- 
nati, made a sensation among scientists, and induced, 
in the case of Sir Jedbury Fargoe, F.R.G.S., M.R.I., a 
rush of blood to the cerebrum, followed by the breaking 
out of a Funeral Hatchment over his front-door, a pro- 
cession in slow time, with wreaths, palls, and feathers, 
and a final exit per trolley into the Furnace at Groking 
Crematorium. 

The Public, never having bothered about the vol- 
canoes, remained unmoved by the intelligence of their 
non-existence, but the Professors and the Press shed 
much ink upon the subject. Upon a wave of which sable 
fluid Captain Arthur Magellison was borne, if not into 
the inner court, at least into the vestibule of the Temple 
of Fame. Then the wave, as is the way of waves, re- 
ceded; leaving Magellison, by virtue of certain re- 
searches and discoveries in Natural History, Botany and 
Physiology, a Member of the Royal Institution, Asso- 
ciate of the Zoological Society, Fellow of the Institute 
of Ethnology, and the husband of the marble Miss Dyce- 
hurst. 

Never was a more appropriate sobriquet bestowed. 
Down in Clayshire, her native county, the statuesque 
Geraldine, orphan heiress of a wealthy landholder not 
remotely connected with the Brewing interests of his 
native isle, dispensed, under the protective auspices of a 
maternal aunt of good family — Miss Dicehurst’s 
mother's deceased papa had wedded a portionless spin- 
ster of noble blood — dispensed, I say, a lavish but stony 


300 


THE LAST EXPEDITION 


hospitality. In London she went out a great deal, look- 
ing like a sculptured Minerva of the Graeco-Latin school, 
minus the helmet but 'plus a tower of astonishing golden 
hair, received proposals from Eligibles and Ineligibles, 
petrified their makers with a single stare, and proceeded 
upon her marmorean way in maiden meditation, fancy 
free. Until she attended that series of lectures, deliv- 
ered at the Edinburgh Hall of Science by the eminent 
Arctic Explorer, Captain Arthur Magellison. 

Society in Clayshire and Society in London expressed 
ardent curiosity to know how the engagement had been 
brought about? All that is known for certain is, that 
after the lecture, when the Explorer held a little reception 
in a draughty enclosure of green baize screens. Miss 
Dycehurst, looking rather like a mythical goddess of the 
Polar Regions, her frosty beauty crowned with its dia- 
dem of pale golden hair, and her fine shape revealed in 
greenish-blue, icily-gleaming draperies, asked a local 
magnate to present the lecturer, and met him at a public 
dinner given in his honor upon the following night. 
Later on in London, where the lecture was, by invitation 
of the learned heads of the nation, repeated. Miss Dyce- 
hurst with a large party occupied the second row of 
stalls. Later still, Magellison dined with the heiress at 
000, Chesterfield Crescent, her town address, and later 
still the couple were Hanover-Squared into one flesh. It 
was in May, and the sacred edifice was garlanded with 
white Rambler roses and adorned with lilies and smilax 
and palms. A Bishop tied the knot, and the choir ren- 
dered the anthem with exquisite effect, as well as ‘Tight 

the Good Fight” and “The Voice that Breathed .” 

And the Bride, in dead white, with a swansdown train 
and a Malines veil, and ropes of pearls and brilliants, 
and a crown of diamond spikes that might have been 


THE LAST EXPEDITION 


301 


sparkling icicles, gleaming and scintillating on the sum- 
mit of her wonderful tower of hair, looked more like the 
Lady of the Eternal Snows than ever. 

No one knew whether the Magellisons’ married life 
was happy or the other thing. Suffice it, as the popular 
three-volume novelist used to say when not compelled to 
pad, that, to all outward seeming, the couple agreed. 
But I think that when the high tide of Fame receded (as 
during 1909, when the thrilling adventures of the daunt- 
less explorer. Blank, were electrifying the newspaper- 
reading world, it certainly did, leaving nothing but a 
vague halo of heroism and adventure hanging about the 
name of Magellison, and a sedimentary deposit of hon- 
orary letters at the tail of it) the woman who had mar- 
ried Magellison knew disillusion. As for Magellison, he 
had always been a silent, absorbed and solitary man. 
And that strange look in those wide-pupilled pale gray 
eyes of his, the eyes of one who has lived through the 
half-year-long twilight of Arctic nights, and seen the 
ringed moon with her mock moons glimmer through the 
ghostly frost-fog, and the pale pink curving feathers of 
the Aurora Borealis stream across the ice-blue sky, and 
the awful crimson of the Polar Day rush up beyond the 
floe and strike the icy loneliness into new beauty and 
new terror — never changed. Perhaps, in discovering the 
true nature of his Geraldine, the Explorer found himself 
traversing a colder and more rugged desert than he had 
encountered when he led the Scottish-Northumbrian 
Polar Expedition in quest of those volcanic ranges 
proved to be non-existent — in Alaska to the North. 

I believe he really loved the woman he had married. 
I know that, while he acted as the unpaid steward of her 
estates, he spent nothing beyond his half-pay, eked out 
by articles which he wrote now and then for the kind of 


S02 


THE LAST EXPEDITION 


Scientific Review that rewards the contributor with ten 
shillings per page of one thousand words, plus the honor 
of having contributed. In his own houses — his wife’s, I 
should say — he was a pathetic nonentity. At 000 Ches- 
terfield Crescent, and at Edengates in Clayshire, the re- 
cent Miss Dycehurst’s country seat, he hugged his own 
rooms, about which, arranged in cases and hung upon 
the walls, were disposed native weapons, stuffed birds, 
geological specimens, dried algae, water-color sketches, 
and such trophies of the Survey Expedition as had not 
been presented by Magellison to needy museums. When 
his name appeared in newspaper-paragraphs as the 
writer of one of the articles referred to, or as the donor 
of such a gift, his wife would pluck him from his beloved 
solitude, and compel him to tread the social round with 
her. But as the slow years crept on, the man himself, 
long before the ebbing tide of Fame left a desolate 
stretch of seaweedy mud where its waters had heaved 
and whispered, was so rarely seen, in his wife’s company 
or out of it, that her all-but-newest friends believed Mrs. 
Arthur Magellison to be the wife of an incurable invalid, 
and the most recent were convinced that she was a 
widow. Proposals of marriage were sometimes made to 
the lady, who by the way was handsomer and stonier 
than ever, by Eligibles or Ineligibles laboring under this 
conviction. 

^‘I am extremely sensible of the honor you have done 
me,” said Mrs. Magellison upon one of these occasions, 
^‘but as a fact, my husband is alive. Which relieves me 
of the necessity — don’t you think? — of coming to a de- 
cision!” 

The man who had proposed, a barely middle-aged, 
extremely good-looking, well-made, well-bred Hawting- 
Holliday of Hirlmere, sufiiciently endowed with ancient. 


THE LAST EXPEDITION 


603 


if embarrassed, acres, and a sixteenth-century Baronetcy, 
to have tempted the marble Geraldine, had her frosty 
hand been disengaged, to its bestowal on him, was, 
though impecunious enough to be strongly attracted by 
the lady’s wealth, yet honestly enamored of her sculptur- 
esque person. Consequently as the final syllable of the 
foregoing utterance fell from the lady’s lips, he assumed, 
for a fieeting instant or so, the rosy complexion of early 
adolescence, and stared upon the conquering Geraldine 
with blank and circular eyes. Then he said: 

^'By — Jove! that does let me out, doesn’t it? My 
dear lady, I entreat you to consider me as prostrate in 
humiliation at your feet. With” — he felt over the sur- 
face of an admirably thought-out waistcoat for his eye- 
glass, which was still in his eye — “with sackcloth and 
ashes, and all the appropriate trimmings. Let me re- 
trieve my character in your eyes by saying, that if it — 
ahem! — gives you any gratification to have a live hus- 
band at this juncture — I will endeavor to share the senti- 
ment. But you really have run him as a Dark Horse, 
now haven’t you?” 

He lifted his eyebrows in interrogation, and the eye- 
glass leaped into the folds of his well-chosen cravat, the 
kind of subdued yet hopeful thing in shades a man of 
taste and brains would put on to propose in. 

“My dear Sir Robert,” Mrs. Magellison said, in well- 
chosen language and with an icy little smile, “I am not 
an adept in the use of sporting phraseology. Captain 
Magellison is of studious habits, retiring nature, and — 
shall I say? — an indolent disposition. It would not very 
well become me if I insisted on his society when he is 
not disposed to bestow it upon me, and therefore I gen- 
erally go out alone. When, unless I give a formal din- 
ner, upon which an occasion my husband must neces- 


THE LAST EXPEDITION 


804 

sarily take his place at the other end of the board— r 
when I entertain intimates ” 

“You put your people at a round table/^ said Hawting- 
Holliday of Hirlmere. “And a round table is the very 
deuce — and — all for obliterating a husband!’^ He found 
his eyeglass and screwed it firmly in. 

“I do not altogether blame the table/' said Mrs. 
Magellison coldly. “Because, upon nine occasions out 
of ten my husband prefers a cutlet in his rooms. Pray 
do not suppose that I find fault with the preference. He 
is not by nature sociable, as I have said, and prefers to 
follow, at Edengates and in Scotland and in Paris, as 
well as here in town, his own peculiar bent. And what 
that is you are probably aware?" She turned her head 
with a superb movement, and her helmet of pale hair 
gleamed in the wintry sunshine that streamed through 
the lace blinds of the Chesterfield Crescent drawing- 
room. 

“I had a general idea," said the man she addressed, 
who, hampered in early life by the fact of being born a 
Hawting-Holliday of Hirlmere, had not succeeded in 
being anything else, “that the late — I beg your par- 
don ! — the present Captain Magellison was — I should say 
is — a Scientific Buffer — of sorts!" 

Mrs. Magellison smiled coldly and rose. 

“The term you employ is slang, of course," she said, 
“but it is quite appropriate and really descriptive. My 
husband was once a famous man, he is now a Scientific 
Buffer — and as you say — of sorts. Would you like to 
see him?" 

She moved to the drawing-room door and turned her 
head with another fine movement, and Hawting-Holli- 
day's eclectic taste was charmed with the sculpturesque 
pose. He followed her and they crossed a landing, and 


THE LAST EXPEDITION 


305 


Mrs. Magellison knocked at the door of one of a suite 
of rooms that had been thrown out over what had been 
a back-yard. And as nobody said “Come in” she en- 
tered, followed by the visitor. 


II 

The room was long, carpeted but uncurtained, and 
lighted by that most depressing of all forms of illumina- 
tion, a skylight. Dwarf bookcases ran round it, and the 
walls were covered with frames and glass cases, primi- 
tive weapons, and a multitude of quaint and curious 
things. There was a low couch, covered with seal skins 
and feather rugs, and a leather writing-chair was set at 
the table, which had on it a fine microscope and many 
scientific instruments, of which the uses were unknown 
to the head of the Hawting-Hollidays of Hirlmere. 
Piles of dusty papers there were, and a couple of bat- 
tered ship’s logs, stained and discolored by sea-water 
and grease. And in the writing-chair, with his feet on a 
magnificent Polar bear-skin and the receiver of a tele- 
phone at his ear, sat the Scientific Buffer of sorts, staring 
fixedly before him, apparently over an illimitable waste 
of frozen drift-ice covering uncharted Polar seas. 

“Arthur!” said Mrs. Magellison, with a cold kind of 
impatience, rattling the handle of the door as if to at- 
tract his attention. He came back with a start and hung 
up the receiver, and rose. He had a simple, courteous 
manner that won upon the suitor who had just proposed 
to his wife; and oddly enough, the appearance of a ser- 
vant with a message that summoned the lady to an inter- 
view with her modiste was not greatly regretted by 
Hawting-Holliday. 


806 


THE LAST EXPEDITION 


'T have seen you before, of course,’’ said his host, 
making him free of a rack of Esquimaux pipes and push- 
ing over a jar of Navy-cut. 

‘‘Have you though?” rose to the visitor’s lips, but the 
words were not allowed to escape. Looking round he 
saw that there were piles of receipted accounts, and or- 
derly piles of tradesmen’s books upon the table with the 
reams of dusty MSS., and as servants came in for orders 
and went away instructed, and messages were telephoned 
to various purveyors, Hawting-Holliday arrived at the 
conclusion that Mrs. Magellison’s husband was regarded 
less in that capacity by Mrs. Magellison and her house- 
hold than as major-domo, head-bailiff and house- 
steward. 

The two men chatted a little, and presently one spoke 
while the other listened. The capacity for hero-worship 
is quick in every generous nature, and the extravagant, 
impoverished, high-bred county gentleman and man- 
about-town was conscious that this modest, absent- 
minded little ex-naval Commander was of the stuff that 
went to build great heroes. Franklin and Nansen were 
brothers to this man, and that the justly-honored names 
of Shackleton and Peary, and the cognomen of Cook 
(King of terminological inexactitudinarians), were hot 
upon the public’s mouths just then, mattered nothing to 
Hawting-Holliday, as he heard how in the year of Our 
Lord Nineteen Hundred and Six, ten men sailed from 
San Francisco for Bering Sea on board a sixty-ton 
schooner, to settle the question of the existence of Un- 
discovered Ranges of Volcanic Origin in Alaska to the 
North. And how great storms and awful blizzards hin- 
dered the Coastal Survey Expedition, and sickness crip- 
pled its members, yet they struggled gamely on. 


THE LAST EXPEDITION 


307 


‘^Good God!’^ said Hawting-Holliday, whose pipe had 
long since gone out. He heard next how the Expedition 
suffered the loss of their ship and all their stores, and 
how their leader sent his crew home by a passing whaler 
and, for the enlargement of his own experience, chose to 
journey back to civilization along the Alaskan coast, 
three thousand miles of solitary sledge-traveling, aided 
only by the Esquimaux he chanced on in his terrible 
journey. And as he went on narrating in his calm and 
even voice, enforcing a point by a modest gesture of the 
hand that had lost the top- joints of the first and second 
fingers, and sometimes looking through and beyond the 
face of the listener with those strange, sorrowful, far- 
away eyes, what he related the other man saw, and 

^‘Good Lord!’^ said Hawting-Holliday again, ‘‘what 
an Odyssey the whole thing is ! And so you got back to 
Ithaca after eighteen months of tramping it on your 
lonesome along a frozen coast and sleeping in holes dug 
in the snow, and living on blubber and seal-meat or 
boiled skin-boots when you couldn’t get anything else; 
and gathering knowledge and experience when there 
wasn’t even reindeer moss to scrape off the rocks!” He 
got up and held out his hand. “As a perfectly useless 
and idle kind of beggar, I don’t know that my sincere 
admiration and respect are worth having. Captain, but 
if they were! ” 

He gulped, and went, quite clumsily, away, but came 
back again, and so a friendship grew between the “per- 
fectly useless and idle kind of beggar,” Hawting-Holli- 
day, and the hero of the three-thousand-mile tramp back 
to Civilization. Perhaps Hawting-Holliday had really 
never been seriously attached to the handsome piece of 
statuary that bore Magellison’s name. It is certain that 


308 


THE LAST EXPEDITION 


her cold neglect and open contempt of her husband 
eventually kindled the wrath of Magellison’s newly-won 
champion to boiling-point. Not that the Captain gave 
any perceptible sign of suffering under the icy blizzard 
of his wife’s scorn. Endurance was the lesson he had 
learned best of all, and he agreed with her in regarding 
himself as a Failure. 

beautiful and gifted woman has a right to be 
ambitious for the man she marries,” he said once to 
Hawting-Holliday. ^‘And if he has no power to keep at 
high-level, if he makes no more way than a schooner 
frozen in the floe, it is natural that she should feel keenly 
disappointed and — and manifest the feeling by a — a cer- 
tain change of attitude as regards him.” 

^The schooner may be frozen in the floe. Captain,” 
said Hawting-Holliday, lounging in the window-seat of 
the Captain’s big, bare room at Edengates, that was — 
only barring the skylight — exactly like the Captain’s 
other big bare room at 000, Chesterfield Crescent. ^‘But 
the floe is traveling all the time. That’s a bit of scien- 
tific information that I got from you. And I rather 
pride myself on applying it neatly.” 

The Captain looked hard at him, and Hawting-Holli- 
day noticed for the first time that the curly fair hair 
that topped the deep-lined pale-bronze face was growing 
white. Then Magellison said, with a queer smile: 

^‘You have found me out, I see! And yet I thought I 
had kept the secret — or rather, the arrangement, quite 
closely. But on the whole I’m rather glad you guessed. 
For I like you, young man” — Hawting-Holliday was at 
least thirty-five — ‘^and I shall give you the parting 
hand-shake with sincere regret — with very sincere re- 
gret, when the ice breaks up and the little engine helps 
the hoisted sails, and the floe-bound vessel that never 


THE LAST EXPEDITION 


309 


really stopped, although her journey was only of inches 
in the month — moves on not North but South, along the 
thawed and open sea-lanes ” 

He stopped, for Hawting-Holliday dropped his pipe 
and got off the window-seat, and caught the maimed 
right hand and wrung it until its owner winced. 

^‘You gave me credit for too much perspicuity. Cap- 
tain. I hadn’t seen as much as the cat’s tail until you 
let her out of the bag. Where are you going, man, and 
when do you go?” 

Briefly, Magellison told him. 

^^All right. Captain,” said Hawting-Holliday. ^^You’re 
going to take charge of the Steam and Sail Antarctic 
Geological Research Expedition, financed by the Swedish 
Government, sailing from Plymouth for King Edward 
Land in April, so as to get the summer months of De- 
cember, January, and February for exploration, botan- 
izing, deep-sea-dredging, and scientific observations. 
You calculate on being away not quite three years. 
Very well, but remember this! If you don’t turn up in 
three years’ time and no definite news has reached us as 
to your whereabouts, the most useless and idle dog of 
my acquaintance — and that’s myself — will take the lib- 
erty to come and look for you. I swear it — by the Great 
Barrier and the Blue Antarctic Ooze!” 

They shook hands upon it, laughing at the humorous 
idea of the Captain’s not coming back, and a little later 
the news of her husband’s impending departure was im- 
parted, per the medium of the Press, to the marmorean 
lady to whom the explorer had frozen himself some few 
years previously. She was radiant with smiles at the 
revival of newspaper interest in Magellison, and post- 
poned her spring visit to the Riviera for the purpose of 
giving a series of Departure Dinners in honor of the 


310 


THE LAST EXPEDITION 


Captain. All the leading scientific lights of the day 
twinkled in turn about the board. And Geraldine wore 
all her diamonds, and was exceedingly gracious to her 
Distinguished Man. She saw him off from Plymouth, 
one balmy April day, and shed a few discreet tears in a 
minute and filmy pocket-handkerchief as the Swedish 
oak-built, schooner-rigged steamship-sailer Selma ran up 
the Swedish colors and curtsied adieu to English waters 
at the outset of the long South Atlantic voyage, and the 
petrol steam-launch containing the friends and relatives 
of the Expedition rocked in her wake, and the red-eyed 
people crowding on the oily-smelling little vessel’s decks 
raised a quavering farewell cheer. Two men stood to- 
gether at the Selma^s after-rail: a short, square man of 
muscular build, with a slight stoop that told of scholarly 
habits, and thick, fair hair, streaked with white, and a 
deeply-lined, clean-shaven face, with pale, far-seeing 
eyes that were set in a network of fine wrinkles. The 
other man was Hawting-Holliday, who had announced 
his intention, at the last minute, of accompanying the 
Expedition as far as Madeira for the sake of the sea- 
blow. 

“Tell Geraldine I shall mail home from the Cape and 
Melbourne,” the leader of the Expedition said, three 
days later, as the boat that was to convey Hawting- 
Holliday ashore bobbed under the Selma’s side-ladder in 
a clamoring rout of tradesmen’s luggers and Funchal 
market-flats. “Tell her I shall certainly communicate 
from Lyttelton, and after that she must trust to luck 
and homeward-bound whalers for news of me.” He 
wrung Hawting-Holliday’s hand, and added, “And in 
case — anything should happen to me — not that such a 
chance is worth speaking of! — I know that I can rely 
upon you to act towards my — my dear girl as a friend!” 


THE LAST EXPEDITION 


311 


The Captain^s voice shook a little, and a mist was over 
those clear, wide-pupilled, far-away-gazing gray eyes. 

promise you that, faithfully,’^ said Hawting-Holli- 
day, and gripped the maimed right hand of the man he 
loved as a brother, and went down over the side of the 
Selma with a sore heart. 

That was in April, 1910, and news of the loss of the 
Selma in the ice of the Antarctic Circle was cabled from 
Honolulu at the beginning of last month. An American 
Antarctic Expedition, having concluded a mission of ex- 
ploration in the summer season of 1910, finding upon the 
coast of King Edward Land the few survivors of the 
Swedish Steam and Sail Antarctic Research Expedition 
making preparations to winter in a wooden hut built out 
of the wreckage of their teak-built sailing-steamer — 
rescued and carried them on their homeward route. The 
saved men, later interviewed at San Francisco, were 
unable to give news of their leader, save that the Cap- 
tain, taking a dog-sledge and a little stock of provisions 
and instruments, and a hearty leave of all of them, 
turned that lined bronze face of his and those eyes with 
the far-away look in their wide pupils, to the dim, mys- 
terious, uncharted regions lying South, in the lap of the 
mysterious Unknown, and with a wave of a fur-gloved 

hand, was lost in them. 

« « « « * 

'^He is dead, Arthur is dead!” moaned Geraldine 
Magellison, in the depths of conjugal anguish and a lace- 
covered sofa-cushion, when the Press and Hawting-Hol- 
liday broke the news between them. ^‘Dead! — and I 
loved him so — I loved him sol” 

^Tt is a pity, under the circumstances,” said Hawting- 
Holliday, carrying out his promise of being a friend to 
Magellison’s wife by telling that wife the truth, ^That 


312 


THE LAST EXPEDITION 


you were so economical in your expressions of affection. 
For I do not think that when the Captain left you he 
had any remaining illusions as to the nature of your 
regard for him.’^ 

^‘How cruel you are — how cruel gasped Geraldine, 
as her maid bore in a salver piled with the regrets of 
Learned Societies and the sympathy of distinguished 
Personages and private friends. 

^Tet me for once use the trite and hackneyed saying 
that I am cruel only to be kind!’^ said Hawting-Holli- 
day, emphatically, “and that I speak solely in the inter- 
ests of — a friend whom I love.’’ 

Mrs. Magellison flushed to the roots of her superb 
golden hair, and consciously drooped her scarcely-red- 
dened eyelids as she held up a protesting hand. 

“No, no. Sir Robert!’^ she pleaded. “If I — as you 
infer — have gravely erred in lack of warmth toward 
poor, poor, dearest Arthur! let me at least be ungrudging 
in respect of his great memory. Forget what you have 
said, carried away by a feeling which in honor you sub- 
dued after the rude awakening of many months ago, and 
do not revert to — the subject for — for at least a year to 
come!” 

At that Hawting-Holliday got upon his legs, and 
thrusting his hands deep into his trouser-pockets, made 
the one and only harangue of his existence. 

“Mrs. Magellison, when you suggest that in the very 
hour when the intelligence of grave disaster to your hus- 
band’s vessel has reached us, I am capable of addressing 
you in what the poetic faculty term — Heaven knows how 
idiotically and falsely ! — the language of love, you 
gravely err. The friend in whose interests I spoke just 
now, was — ^your husband. Is your husband — for I do 
not accept by any means the theory that because he has 


THE LAST EXPEDITION 


313 


been lost sight of, he is dead. I believe him to be living. 
I shall go on believing this until I see his body, or meet 
with some relics of him that supply me — his friend! — 
with the evidence that you, his wife, are so uncommonly 
ready to dispense with.” 

His eyes burned her with their contempt. She gasped: 

“You — ^you mean that you are going South to try and 
find him?” 

“You comprehend my meaning perfectly,” said Hawt- 
ing-Holliday, and bowed to Mrs. Magellison with iron- 
ical deference and left her. 

He was, though not a wealthy man, far from being a 
poor one. He chartered a stout vessel that was lying in 
Liverpool Docks, the Iceland Coast Survey Company’s 
steam-and-sail schooner Snowbird, and equipped and 
provisioned and manned her with a speed and thorough- 
ness that are seldom found in combination. The Snow- 
bird’s own skipper goes in charge of his ship, but Hawt- 
ing-Holliday is the Leader of the Expedition. 

And yesterday the Snowbird sailed, in search of that 
man who has been swallowed up by the great Conjecture. 
And of this I am sure, that whether Hawting-Holliday 
succeeds or fails, lives or dies, he will grasp the hand of 
his friend again Somewhere. Either upon this side of 
the Great Gray Veil that hangs in the doorway of the 
Smoky House, or upon the other. . . . 


THE END 








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